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Pkit Vbio* fir*?, io 



^arbarfc College ILihrarg 




FROM THE BEQJJEST OF 

JOHN HARVEY TREAT 

OF LAWRENCE, MASS. 
(Class of 1862) 







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m 



DIEGESIS; 



A DISCOVERY 



ORIGIN, EVIDENCES, AND'EARLY HISTORY 

ehviitimit®. 



NEVER YET BEFORE OR ELSEWHERE SO FULLY AND 
FAITHFULLY SET FORTH. 



THE Rev. R. TAYLOR, A.B. & M.R.C.S. 

<Pt\9To$ixv St tw fAtv xorct Qvo%v, u £awiXtv, tvouvt nm ma*m£w. rnu h f 
QeoxKmw favxowrau rapurw. — Euphrates Philosopk. ad Vespasian, imp. 
quod Apollonii Tyana Miracula: ciiante Lurdnero, Vol. IV. p. 261. 



THIRD EDITION. 



LONDON: 
W. DUGDALE, 16, HOLYWELL ST. STRAND. 



1845. 



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1° 



^ 




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d 



DEDICATION. 



I MASTER, FELLOWS, AND TUTORS OF ST. JOHN'S COL- 
1 LEGE, CAMBRIDGE. 

Reverend and Learned Sirs, 

In interesting remembrance of the high sense your learned body were 
pleased to express of my successful studies, when I received your gene" 
ral vote of thanks , delivered to me by the Master himself ', the late Dr. 
Craven, for the honour you were pleased to consider that my poor talents 
and application, " in statu pupillari? had conferred on our College, which 
holds such distinguished rank in the most distinguished University in 
the world; I very respectfully dedicate the Diegesis, the employment 
of my many solitary hours in an unjust imprisonment, incurred in the 
most glorious cause that ever called virtue to act, or fortitude to suffer. 
You will appreciate ( far beyond any wish of mine thai you should seem 
to appreciate) the merits of this work. Your assistance for the perfect- 
ing of future editions, by animadversion on any errors which might 
have crept into the first; and the feeling with respect to it, which I 
cannot but anticipate, though it may never be expressed ; will amply 
gratify an ambition whose undivided aim was to set forth truth, and 
nothing else but truth. 

\ * ROBERT TAYLOR, A.B. 

| PRISONER. 

I 

I Oakham Gaol, Feb. 19, 1829. 



j 



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CONTENTS. 



Prolegomena. 



Importance of the subject — Criminality of indifference — Dr. Whitby's last 
thoughts, &c. 3 

CHAP. I. 

Definitions, Time, Place, Circumstances, Identity of Jesus Christ of 
Nazareth necessary to be established— Geography of Palestine . . 5 

CHAP. II. 

The Christian and Pagan Creeds collated — The Apostles* Creed a 
Forgery — Inference that it is a Paean document applied to Christian 
purposes— Necessity of examining the pretences of all writings that lay 
claim to Canonical authority . . . . . . .10 

CHAP. III. 

State of the Heathen World— Heathenism to be judged as Christians 
would wish their own religion to be judged-— The Pacific Age — The genius 
of Paganism most tolerant and philosophical — Vast difference between the 
philosophers and the vulgar — The philosophers were Deists — The vulgar; 
infinitely credulous 12 

CHAP. IV. 

The state of the Jews — The Jews the grand exception to the prevalence 
of universal toleration — They plagiarized Pagan fables into their pretended! 
divine theology — Were as gross Idolators as the Heathens— Truth of Ju- 
daism not essential to the truth of Christianity — The Pharisees — The Sad- 
ducees — The Cabbala — The Jews had no notion of the immortality of the 
soul ; while the Heathens had more practical faith therein than any Chris- 
tians of the present day . . • . • . . .19 

CHAP. V. 

State of Philosophy — 4 generally prevailing debility of the human under- 
standing— rVitiation of morals — Destruction of documents — Maxims of de- 
ceiving the vulgar, and perpetuating ignorance, approved by St Paul- 
King's CoUege, London — Gnosticism— System of philosophy . . .38 



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vi * CONTENTS. 

CHAP. VI; 

Admissions of Christian writers — Deficiency of evidence— Christians 
before the Christian era — Chrstian frauds — Christian Scriptures not in the 
hands of the laity — Christianity and Paganism hardly distinguishable — 
Miraculous powers, dreams, visions, charms, spells — Name of Jesus a 
spell 36 

CHAP. VII. 

Of the Essenes or Therapeuts — Differences of opinion with respect to 
them — Every thing of Christianity is of Egyptian origin — Apostolic and 
Apotactic monks — The Therapeuts were Christians before the Augustan era 
— Eclectics— The forgery of the gospels ascribed to mongrel Jews . . 54 

CHAP. VIII. 

The Christian Scriptures, doctrines, discipline, and ecclesiastical polity, 
long anterior to the period assigned as that of the birth of Christ — Recapi- 
tulation — An original translation of the famous 16th chapter of the 2nd 
^book of EusebWs Ecclesiastical History 62 

CHAP. IX. 

Of Philo and his testimony— Sum of his admissions . . . .69 

' ". CHAP. X. 

Corollaries — Eusebius — Sufficient guarantee for the text of Philo— Con-- 
flicting opinions — Severe sarcasm of Gibbon— The demonstration absolute 
that the monks of Egypt were the authors of the gospels — Mr. Evanson's 
perplexities relieved — Alexandria the cradle of Christianity — Its slow pro- 
gress — Episcopal insolence of Dionysius — St. Mark, a monk . . .70 

CHAP. XL 

Corroborations of the evidence, arising from the admissions of Eusebius, 
in the New Testament itself 80 

CHAP. XII. 

References to the monkish or Therapeutan doctrines to be traced in the 
New Testament — Apollos, a Therapeut— Vagabond Jews — The New Tes- 
tament entirely allegorical— The English translation of it Protestantizes 
in order to keep its monkish origin out of sight — St. Paul's account of the 
resurrection wholly different from that of the Evangelists —The con- 
clusion ........ .... 84 

CHAP. XIII. 

On the claims of the Scriptures of the New Testament to be considered 
as genuine and authentic— Preliminary— The authenticity of St. Paul's 
epistles and of so much of his history (miracles excepted) as is contained 
in the Acts of the Apostles,' affords no presumption in favour of the 



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CONTENTS. tii 

canonical gospels — The canon of the New Tstament not settled even so 
late as the middle of the sixth • century — Mode of argument to be ob- 
served in this Dieoesis 100 

CHAP. XIV. 
Canons of criticism — Data of criticism to be applied in judging the com- 
parative claims of the apocryphal and canonical gospels— Corollaries— 
Dr. Lardner's table of times and places 102 

CHAP. XV. 

Of the four gospels in general-*-Confession of the forcery of the gospels, by 
Faustus — Twenty objections to be surmounted — Order for a general alter- 
ation of the gospels by Anastasius — Alterations by Lanfrane . . , . 105 

CHAP. XVI. 

Of the origin of our first three canonical gospels— The great plagiarism 
gradually discovered — Le Clerc — Dr. Semlei^-Lessing's hypothesis, Nie- 
meyer's, Halfeld's, Beausobre's, Bishop Marsh's — The Diecesis — The 
Gnomologue 110 

CHAP. XVII. 

Of St. John's gospel in particular-— Dr. Sender's hypothesis — Evanson — 
Bretschneider— Falsehood of gospel geography, of gospel dates, of gospel 
statistics, of gospel phraseology .121 

CHAP. XVIII. 

Ultimate result— The monks of Egypt the fabricators of the whole 
Christian system 127 

CHAP. XIX. 

Resemblance of the Pagan and Christian theology — Augury and Bishops 
— i&sculapius — Hercules — Adonis — Parallel passages in Cicero and the 
New Testament — Royal Priests — Subordinate clergy— Priests of Cyoele — 
Parasites or domestic chaplains — Conversion from Paganism to Christianity 
brought about entirely by a transfer of property . . . .129 

CHAP. XX. 

JEsculapius and Jesus Christ the same figment of imagination — Miracles 
of iEseulapius better authenticated than those of Jesus— iEsculapius distin- 
guished by the very epithets afterwards ascribed to Jesus . . .138 

CHAP. XXI. 

Hercules and Jesus Christ, the same figment of imagination — Dr. Park- 
hunt's anger at those who doubt that Hercules was a divinely intended type 
of Jesus Christ — Pagan form of swearing — Superior moral virtue of the 
Turks p 144 



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Tili CONTENTS. 



CHAP. XXII. 



Adonis— Ridiculous literal renderings of the Psalms — Jehovah and Adonis 
used indifferently as common names of the same deity — Words of our 
Easter hymn used at the festival of the Adonia 148 

CHAP. XXIII. 

TTie mystical sacrifice of the Phoenicians — A draft of the whole Christian 
system — Archbishop Magee, one of the Author's persecutors. . 156 

CHAP. XXIV. 

Christina, of the Brahmins, the original Jesus Christ — The absolute 
identity of Chrishna and Christ, triumphant in the complete overthrow of all 
the attempts of Drs. Bentley and Smith, Beard, and others, to disprove it- 
Dishonest engagement of Christian Missionaries. . . , 157 

CHAP. XXV. 

Apollo, Jesus Christ the Egyptian version of the Indian Christ. .168 

CHAP. XXVI. 

Mercury, Jesus Christ — The Word, Jesus Christ — Amelius proves theii 
identity ' 17t 

CHAP. XXVII. 

Bacchus, Jesus Christ — His name Yes— Bacchus addressed in the very 
words of Christian worship — A personification of the Sun — The Bacchanalia 
identical with Christian sanctification 174 

CHAP. XXVIII. 

Prometheus, Jesus Christ— The Grecian version of the Indian Chrishna, 
identical with the Christian god, Providence — The preternatural darkness at 
the Crucifixion a palpable falsehood, derived from iEschylus's tragedy of 
Prometheus Bound . . .179 

CHAP. XXIX; 

The Sign of the Cross entirely Pagan — Found in the temple of the god 
Serapis — The high priests of Serapis known and distinguished by the title of 
Bishops of Christ. . ■ . . 185 

CHAP. XXX. 

The Tauribolia-r-The whole theory and practice of the Christian doctrine 
of Regeneration « 194 

CHAP. XXXI. 
Baptism — The Baptists an effeminate and debauched order of Pagan priests 



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CONTENTS. (a v 

- Astrological character of John the Baptist— Of St. Thomas— The New 
Testament entirely allegorical 195 

CHAP. XXXII. 
The Eleusiman Mysteries entirely the same as the Christian Sacrament of 
Jhe Lord's Supper — Bacchus, as the Sun, the common object of worship in 
ooth 198 

CHAP. XXXIII. 

Pythagoras, the type of the human or man-Jesus — the Pythagorean Me- 
tempsychosis the best system of supernaturali&m 204 

, HAP. XXXIV. 
Archbishop RHotson's Confession of the identity of Christianity and Pa- 
ganism. 211 

CHAP. XXXV. 

Resemblance of Pagan and Christian forms of Worship— ^The White Sur- 
plice—The Baptismal Font— Nundination and Infant Baptism — The old 
stories of the ancient Paganism adopted into Christianity — The Pantheon- 
Similar inscriptions in Pagan Temples and Christian Churches — Saints and 
Martyrs that never existed. 216 

CHAP. XXXVI. 
Specimens of Pagan Piety—The first Orphic Hymn to Prothyrsa — Hymn 
to Diana— The Creed and Golden Verses of Pythagoras— The Morals of 
Confucius. i 226 

CHAP. XXXVII. 

Charges brought against Christianity by its earliest adversaries, and the 
Christiaxi manner of answering those charges — Hie Doctrine of Manes, and 
his History— Demonstration that no such person as Jesus Christ ever existed 
Admission of Bishop Herbert Marsh — Admissions to the same effect of the 
early Fathers. . . . . . . » . . . 231 . 

CHAP. XXXVIII. 
Christian Evidences adduced from Christian writings — Dorotheus' Lives 
of the Apostles — Origin of the Acts of the Apostles, Cephas, Judas, Mark, 
Luke, Paul — That there is no difference between the Popish legends and 
the canonical acts of the Apostles — That no such persons as the twelve Apos- 
tles evee existed • 246 

CHAP. XXXIX. 

The Arguments of Martyrdom — That Martyrdom is not the kind of evidence 
which we have a right to expect — The impropriety of the argument a* it re- 
spects the character of God — The impropriety of the argument as it respects 
the character of Man— That the argument of Martyrdom is absolutely not 
true— Specimens of Marty rology. 260 



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« CONTENTa 

CHAP. XL. 
The Apostolic Fathers— St. Barnabas, St. dement, St. Hermas, St. Poly- 
carp, St. Ignatius — Correspondence of Ignatius with the Virgin Mary— Re- 
sult— Perfect Parallel of Pagan and Christian Mysteries. ... 272 

CHAP. XLI. 
The Fathers of the Second Century— Papias Quadratus, Aristides, Hege- 
sippus, Justin Martyr, Meiito, St. lrenaeus, Pant«nus, Clemens Alexandri- 
nus f TertuJUan. , . . . . . * . . ♦ . • 288 

CHAP. XLII. 
The Fathers of the TTurd Century— Origen— The dolorous lamentation of 
Origen—- His answer to Celsus, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, St. Cyprian. . 31 1 



CHAP. XLIII. ... 

The Fathers of the Fourth Century — Constahti&e the Great — Motives of 
his Conversion — The Evidences of Christianity as they appeared to Constan- 
tine — His oration to the Clergy — Eusebius, the great Ecclesiastical Historiau 
—T^e holy dog 326. 

CHAP. XL1V. 
Testimony of Heretics, who denied Christ's humanity — Cerdon, Marcion, 
Leucius, Apelles, Faustus — Who denied Christ's divinity-— Who denied , 
Christ's Crucifixion— Who denied Christ'* Resurrection. . . . 346 

CHAP. XLV. 

The whole of the external evidence of the Christian "Religion— *The testi- 
mony of Lucian, of Phlegon— The passage of Macrpbius — Publius Lentulus 
— The Veronica handkerchief— The testimony of Pilate — A coincident passage 
from Arnobius — The passage of Josephus— The celebrated inscription to 
Nero— Similar Inscriptions — Tacitus, Suetonius, Pliny, Epictetus, Plutarch, 
Juvenal, Emp. Adrian, Emp. Aurelius Antoninus, Martial, Apuleius, Lucian 
-—List of ancient writers. . . 35C 

APPENDIX. 

Containing an account of the various known M.S. copies of the New Testa- 
ment, and the source of the present received copy — Various versions, Greek 
editions, and translations, of the New Testament — Spurious passages in 
ditto — False representations — Abbreviations — Dates of the reigns of the 
Roman Emperors— Names and order of the succession of the Christian 
fathers and heretics— Ecclesiastical historians and councils — Sketch of the 
general councils — Present ecclesiastical revenues — Numerical extent of 
Christianity—Authorities adduced in this Diegesis — Texts of Scripture 
b ought into illustration in this Diegesis. . . . . • 395 



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PROLEGOMENA. 



Ok all hands 'tis admitted that the Christian religion is matter of most 
serious importance : it is so, if it be truth, because in that truth a law 
of faith and conduct, measuring out to us a propriety of sentiment and 
action, which would otherwise not be incumbent upon us, is propounded 
to our observance in this life ; and eternal consequences of* happiness 
or of misery, are at issue upon our observance or neglect of that law. 

To deny to the Christian religion such a degree of importance, is not 
only to launch the keenest sarcasm against its whole apparatus of su- 
pernatural phenomena, but is virtually to withdraw its claims and 
pretensions altogether. For if men, after having received a divine re- 
velation, are brought to know no more than what they knew before, nor 
are obliged to do any thing which otherwise they would not have been 
equally obliged to do ; nor have any other consequences of their con- 
duct to hope or fear, than otherwise would have been equally to be 
hoped or feared ; then doth the divine revelation reveal nothing, and 
all the pretence thereto is driven into an admission of being a mis-use 
of language. On the other hand, the Christian religion is of scarce 
less importance, if it be false ; because, no wise and good man could 
possibly be indifferent or unconcerned to the prevalence of an extensive 
and general delusion. No good and amiable heart could for a moment 
think of yielding its assent to so monstrous an idea, as the supposition 
that error could possibly be useful, that imposture could be beneficial, 
that the heart could be set right by setting the understanding wrong, 
tl*at men were to be made rational by bein*r deceived, and rendered 
just and virtuous by credulity and ignorance. 

To be in error one's self, is a misfortune ; and if it be such an error 
as mightily affects our peace of mind, it k a very grievous misfortune ; 
. to be the cause of error to other, either by deceiving them ourselves, or 
by connivance, and furtherance of the councils and machinations by 
which we see that they are deceived, is a crime ; it is a most cruel 
triumph over nature's weakness, a most barbarous wrong done to our 
brother man ; it is the kind of wrong which we should most justly and 
keenly resent, could we- be sensible of its being put upon ourselves. 

A Nero playing upon his harp, in view of a city in flames, is a less 
frightful picture than that o° the solitary philosopher, basking in the 
serenity of his own speculations, but indifferent to the ignorance he 
could remove, the error he could correct, or the misery he could relieve. 



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4 PROLEGOMENA. 

As, then, there is no falsehood more apparently false, and more mo- 
rally mischievous, than to suppose that error can be useful, and delusion 
conducive to happiness and virtue : so, there can be no place for 
the medium or alternative of indifference between the truth or falsehood 
of the Christian religion. Every argument that could show it to be a 
blessing to mankind, being true, must in like degree tend to demonstrate 
it to be a curse and a mischief being false. 

If it be true, there can be no doubt that God, its allwise and bene- 
volent author, must have given to it such sufficient evidence and proofs 
of its truth, that every creature whom he hath endued with rational fa- 
culties, upon the honest and conscientious exercise of those faculties, 
must be able to arrive at a perfect and satisfactory conviction. To 
suppose that there either is, or by any possibility could be, a natural 
disinclination or repugnancy in man's mind, to receive the truths of re- 
velation, is, " to charge God foolishly ;" as if, when he had the making 
of man's mind, and the making of his revelation also, he had not known 
how to adapt the one to the other ; nor is it less than to open the door to 
every conceivable -absurdity and imposture, and to give to the very 
grossness and palpability of falsehood, the advantage over evidence, 
truth, and reason. If we are to conceive that any thing may be the 
more likely to be true, in proportion to its appearing more palpably and 
demonstrably false, and that God can possibly have intended us to em- 
brace that, which he has so constituted our minds, that they must 
naturally suspect and dislike it, why so, then, ail principles and tests 
of truth and evidence are abolished at once ; we may as well take poison 
for our food, and rush on what our nature shudders at, for safety. 

To suppose that belief or unbelief can either be a virtue or a crime, or 
any man morally better or worse for belief or unbelief, is to assume 
that man has a faculty which we see and feel he has not ;* to wit, — a 
power of making himself believe, of being convinced when he is not con- 
vinced, and not convinced when he is ; which is a being and not being 
at the same time, the sheer end of " all discourse of reason? 

To suppose that a suitable state of mind, and certain previous dispo- 
sitions of meekness, humility, and teachableness are necessary to fit 
us for the reception of divine truth, as the soil must be prepared to re- 
ceive the seed, is in like manner to argue preposterously, and to open 
the door to the reception of falsehood as well as of truth ; as the pre- 
pared ground will fertilize the tares as prolifically as the wheat and 
is indifferent to either. 

And in proportion as the state of mind so supposed to be necessary, 

* This thought is Dr. Whitby's ; who, after publishing his voluminous CommemaTj 
on the Scriptures, published this among his " Last Thoughts. " 



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DEFINITIONS. h 

is supposed to be an easily yielding, readily consenting, and feebly re* 
sitting state ; the more facile is it to the practices of imposture and 
cunning, and the less worthy conquest of evidence and reason. The 
property of truth is not, surely, to wait till men are in right frames of 
mind to receive it, but to find them wfong, and to set them right ; to find 
them ignorant, and to make them wise ; not created by the mind, but 
itself the mind's creator ; it is the sovereign that ascends the throne, 
and not the throne that makes the sovereign ; where it reigns not, right 
dispositions cannot be found, and where it reigns, they cannot be 
wanting. 

The highest honour we can pay to truth, is to shew our confi- 
dence in it, and our desire to have it sifted and analyzed, by how rough 
a process soever *, as being well assured that it is that alone that can 
abide all tests, and which, like the genuine gold, will come out all the 
purer from the fiercer fire. 

While there are bad- hearted men in the world, and those who wish 
to make falsehood pass for truth, they will ever discover themselves and 
their counsel, by their impatience of contradiction, their hatred of those 
who differ from them, their wish to suppress inquiry, and their bitter 
resentment, when what they call truth has not been handled with the 
delicacy and niceness, which it was never any thing else but falsehood 
that required or needed. 

All the mighty question now before us requires, is attention and 
ability ; without any presentiment, prejudication, or prepossession what- 
ever ; but with a perfect and equal willingness to come to such conclu- 
sion as the evidence of moral demonstration shall offer to our conviction, 
and to be guided only by such canons or rules of evidence as determine 
our convictions with respect to all other questions 



CHAPTER L 

DEFINITIONS. 



By the Christian religion is to be understood the whole system of theology 
found in the Bible, as consisting of the two volumes of the Old and New 
Testament; and as that system now is, and generally has been understood, 
by the many,or general body of that large community of persons pro- 
fessing and calling themselves Christians. 

That this system of theology might not be confounded with previously 
existing pretences of divine revelation, or held to be a mere enthusiasm 

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6 DEFINITIONS. 

or conceit of imagination, its best and ablest advocates challenge for it, 
historical data, and affect to trace it up to its original in tinie, place, and 
circumstance, as all other historical facts may be traced. 

Upon this ground, the doctrines become facts, and we are no longer 
called on to believe, but to investigate and examine. We are permitted, 
fearlessly, to apply the rules of criticism and evidence, by which we 
measure the credibility of all other facts. 

The time assigned as that of the historical origination of Christian- 
ity, is, the three or four first centuries of the prevalence and notoriety 
of a system of theology under that name ; reckoning from the reign of 
the Roman Emperor Augustus, to its ultimate and complete establish- 
ment under Constantine the Great. 

Any continuance of its history after this time is unnecessary to the 
purpose of an investigation of its evidences ; as any proof of its exist- 
ence before this time, would certainly be fatal to the origination chal- 
lenged for it. 

The place assigned as that of the historical origination of this Reli- 
gion, is, the obscure and remote province of Judea, which is about equal 
in extent of territory to the principality of Wales, being one hundred 
and sixty miles in length, from Dan to Beersheba, and forty-six miles in 
breadth, from Joppa, to Bethlehem, between 35 and 36 degrees east 
longitude from Greenwich, and between 31 and 33 degrees touth lati- 
tude, in nearest coasting upon the eastern extremity of the Mediterra- 
nean sea, and in the neighbourhood of Egypt, Arabia, Phoenicia, and 
Syria* 

The cwcumstances assigned as those of the historical basis of this 
religion, are, that in the reigns of the Roman Emperors Augustus and 
Tiberius, and in the province of Judea, a Jew, of the lower orde? ot 
that lowest and most barbarous of all the subjects of the Roman empire, 
arose into notoriety among his countrymen, from the circumstance of 
leaving his ordinary avocation as a labouring mechanic, and travelling 
on foot from village to village in that little province, affecting to cure 
diseases ; that he preached the doctrines, or some such, as are ascribed 
to him in the New Testament ; and that he gave himself out to be some 
extraordinary personage ; but failing in his attempt to gain popularity, 
lie was convicted as a malefactor, and publicly executed, under the 
presidency and authority of the Roman procurator, Pontius Pilate. 
This extraordinary person was called Jesus, or Joshua, a name of or- 
dinary occurrence among the Jewish clan ; and from the place of his 

* " The geography of Palestine lies in a narrow compass. It comprises a tract of 
country of nearly 200 miles in length, in ks full extent, from the river of Egypt south of 
Gaza, to the farthest bounds towards Damascus, and perhaps of more than 100 in breadth, 
including Perea, from the Mediterranean eastward to the desert Arabia."— Els ley. 



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DEFINITIONS. f 

nativity, or of his more general residence, he is designated as Jests 
of Nazabbth : the obscurity of his parentage, or his equivocal legiti- 
macy having left him without any name or designation of his family or 
descent.* 

These are circumstances which fall entirely within the scale of ra- 
tional probability, and draw for no more than an ordinary and indiffer- 
ent testimony of history, to command the mind's assent. '1 he mere 
relation of any historian, living near enough to the time supposed, to 
guarantee the probability of his competent information on the subject, 
would have been entitled to our acquiescence. We could have no rea- 
son to deny ot to doubt, what such an historian could have had no 
motive to feign or to exaggerate. The proof, even to demonstration, 
of these circumstances, would constitute no step or advance towards 
the proof of the truth of the Christian religion ; while the absence of a 
sufficient degree of evidence to render even these circumstances unques- 
tionable, must, a fortiori, be fatal to the credibility of the less credible 
circumstances founded npon them. . 

If there be no absolute certainty that such a man existed, still less 
can there be any proof that such and such were his actions, as have 
been ascribed to him. Those who might have reasons or prejudices to 
induce them to deny that such and such were the actions ascribed to 
such a person, could have none to deny or to conceal the mere fact of 
his existence as a man. To this effect, the testimony of enemies is as 
good as that of friends. One competent historian, (if such can be ad- 
duced), speaking of Jesus of Nazareth as an impostor, would be as 
unexceptionable a witness to the fact of his existence, as one who should 
assert everything that hath ever been asserted of him. 

The authentic and unsophisticated testimony of Cblsus, that 
Jesus of Nazareth wrought miracles by the power of magic, though it be 
no proof that Jesus of Nazareth wrought miracles by the power of ma- 
gic, and no proof that Jesus of Nazareth wrought miracles, yet, as far 
it avails, it avails to the proof of the conviction of Celsus, that such a 
person as Jesus of Nazareth really existed. J We emphatically say such 
a person as Jesus of Nazareth; because the name Jesus being as 
common among the Jews as John or Thomas among Christians, nothing 
hinders but there might have been some dozen, score, or hundred 
Jesuses of Nazareth ; so that proof (if it could be adduced) of the exis- 
tence of any one of these, unless coupled with an accompanying proof 

* Being, ' as was supposed/ the son of Joseph, Luke iv. 23. It was no matter of sap- 
position that his mother had yielded to his embraces of Gabriel ; that is, literally, the 
man of God, Luke ',. 38. 

■f It must never be forgotten, that we have no testimony of Celsus, but only the testi- 
mony which Origen has fathered on him : which is a very different thing. 



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• definitions; 

that that one was the Jesus of Nazareth distinguished from alt others 
of that designation, by the circumstance of having been " crucified under 
Pontius Pilate," would be no proof of the existence of the Jesus of the 
Gospel, of whose identity the essential predicates are, not alone the 
name Jesus, and the place Nazareth, but the characteristic distinction 
of crucifixion 

Still less, and further off than ever from any absolute identification 
with the Jesus of the Gospel, is the regal title Chbist,* or the 
Anointed, which was not only held by all the kings of Israel, but so 
commonly assumed by all sorts of impostors, conjurors, and pretenders 
to supernatural communications, that the very claim to it is, in the 
Gospel itself, considered as an indication of imposture, and a reason and 
rule for withholding our credence : there being no rule in that Gospel 
more distinct than that, "if any man shall say to you, lo, here is 
Christ, or lo, he is there, believe him not" Mark xiv, 21. No reason 
more explicit than that, when one of his immediate disciples applied 
that title to the Jesus of the Gospel, he himself disclaimed it, " and 
straightly charged and commanded them to tell no man that thing," 
Luke ix. 21,t Matt xvi. 29. 

So that, should authentic and probable history present us with a 
record of the existence of a Christ, pretending to a supernatural com* 
mission, we should have but that one chance for, against the many 
chances against, the identity of such a Christ with the person of the Jesus 
of Nazareth. 

Should authentic history present us even with a Chbist who was 
crucified, though such a record would certainly come within the list 
of very striking coincidences, in relation to the evangelical story ; yet, 
as we certainly know that Christ was one of the most ordinary titles 
that religious impostors were wont to assume, and Crucifixion an 
ordinary punishment consequent on detected imposture, a Christ 
crucified would by no means identify the " Je us Christ, and Sim 
crucified?' of the New Testament. 

The testimony of Tacitus, however, which we shall consider in its 
chronological order, purports to be more specific than this, and to come 
up nearly to the full amount of the predications necessary to establish 
the identification required, " Christ, who was put to death under the 
Procurator Pontius Pilate.*% This is either genuine, authentic, and 

* Fvcn the heathen Prince Cyras is called, by Isaiah, the Christ of God. — Isa. xiv. 1 . 
This is not the usual sense given to these words, but it is borne out by his questions 
sci me Pharisees, "What think ye of Christ? whose son is he?'* Matt xxii, 42. A 
mode of speaking that no man would use with reference to himself. 

t It wants only the addition of the name, " Jesus." It is, however, hardly likely, that 
two claimants of the name of Christ, should hare been crucified under the samp 
governor. 



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DEFINITIONS. 9 

valid evidence to the full extent to which it purports to extend, or it is 
the forgery of a wonderfully adroit and well-practised sophisticator. 

The extent of its purport will be matter of subsequent investigation. 
Our respect for it, in the present stage of our process, stands in guar- 
antee of. our willingness and desire to receive and admit whatever 
bears the character of that sort of rational evidence, which is admitted 
on all other questions ; while we lay to the line and the plummet, that 
irremeable and everlasting border of distinction that separates the 
bright focus of truth and certainty from the misty indistinctness and 
confusion ef fallacy and fable. 

But further off, even to an infinite remoteness from any designation 
or reference to the person of the crucified Jesus, are the complimentary 
and idolatrous epithets of honour or of worship, which the heathen 
nations, from the remotest antiquity, were in the habit of applying to 
their gods, demigods, and heroes, who, from the various services which 
they were believed to have rendered to mankind, were called saviours 
of the world, redeemers of mankind, physicians of souls, &c, and 
addressed by every one of the doxologies, even, not excepting one of 
those which Christian piety has since confined and appropriated to the 
Jewish Jesus. 

Nor are any of the supernatural, or extraordinary circumstances, which 
either with truth or without it, are asserted or believed of the man of 
Nazareth, at all characteristic or distinctive of that person, from any of 
the innumerable host of heaven-descended, virgin-born, wonder-work- 
ing sons of God, of whom the like supernatural and extraordinary 
circumstances were asserted and believed, with as great faith, and with 
as little reason. 

To have been the whole world's desideratum, to have been foretold 
by a long series of undoubted prophecies, to have been attested by a 
glorious display of indisputable miracles, to have revealed the most 
mystical doctrines, to have acted as never man acted, and to have 
suffered as never man suffered, were among the most ordinary creden- 
tials of the gods and goddesses with which Olympus groaned. 

As our business in this treatise is with stubborn feet and absolute 
evidence, I shall subjoin so much of the Christian creed as is absolutely 
and unquestionably .of Pagan origin, and which, though not found as 
put together in this precise formulary, is certainly to be deduced from 
previously existing Pagan writings. That only, which could not, or * 
would not, have expressed the fair sense of any form of Pagan faith, 5 
can be peculiarly Christian. That only which the Christian finds that j 
he has to say, of which a worsliipper of the gods could not have said I 
the same or the like before him, is Christianity. \ 

2 m 



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la 



CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN 



COLLATED. 



CHAPTER IL 



THE CHKISTIAH AND PAGAN CftZZM COIXATKB* 



The Christian Creed. 

1. I believe in God the Father 
Almighty, maker of heaven and earth. 

2. And in Jesus Christ his only 
son our Lord, who was conceived by 
the Holy Spirit 

3. Born of the Virgin Mary. 

4. Suffered under Pontius Pilate. 

5. Was crucified. 

6. Dead and buried. 

7. He descended into hell. 

8; The third day he rose again from 
the dead. 

9. He ascended into heaven. 

10. And sitteth at the right hand of 
God the Father Almighty. 

11. From whence he shall come to 
judge the quick and the dead. 

12. I believe in the Holy Ghost. 

13. The Holy Catholic Church. 

14. The Communion of Saints. 

15. The forgiveness of sins. 

16. The resurrection of the body. 

1 7. And the life everlasting. 

This creed, though not to be found 
in this form in the Christian Scriptures, 
is evidently deducible from them as 
their sense and purport. 

" This creed still bears the name of 
the ApostUi Creed. From the fourth 
century downwards it was almost ge- 
nerally considered as a production oi 
the Apostles. All, however, who have 
the least knowledge of antiquity, look 
upon this opinion as entirely false, and 
destitute of all foundation. There is 
much more reason in the opinion of 
those who think that this creed was not 
all composed at once, but from small 
beginnings was imperceptibly augment- 



He P«gvs Creed. 

I believe in God the Father Al- 
mighty, maker of heaven and earth. 

And in Jasios * Christ his only son 
our Lord, who was conceived by the 
Holy Spirit. 

Born of the Virgin Electa. 

Suffered under fvAoat it might be). 

Was struck by a thunderbolt. 

Dead and buried. 

He descended into hell. 

The third day he rose again from 
the dead. 

He ascended into heaven. 

And sitteth at the right hand of God 
the Father Almighty. 

From whence he shall come to judge 
the quick and the dead. 

I believe in the Holy Ghost. 

The Holy Catholic Divinity. 

The Communion of Saints. 

The forgiveness of sins. 

The immortality of the soul. 

And the life everlasting. 

This creed, though not to be found 
in this form in the Pagan Scriptures, 
is evidently deducible from them as 
their sense and purport. 

The reader is to throw into this scale 
an equal quantity of allowance and apo- 
logy to that claimed by the advocate of 
Christianity for the opposite. He will 
only observe that, on this side, apology 
and palliation for a known and acknow- 
leged imposture and forgery for so 
many ages palmed upon the world, is 
not needed. 

It is not the Pagan creed that was 
imposed upon mankind, under a false 
superscription, and ascribed to an au- 



* " Jifiuiqae Pater, genus a quo prindpe nostrum.*' 
Macs our met is descended.— VimoiL. 



And flrther Jaslus, from which 



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CHRISTIAN AND PAGAN CREEDS COLLATED. 11 

ed, in proportion to the growth of he- thority from which it was known not to 
resy, and according to the exigencies have proceeded. Whether a church, 
and circumstances of the church, from which stands convicted of having forged 
which it was designed to banish the its creed, would have made any scruple 
errors that daily arose."— Mosheim, of forging its gospels, is a problem that 
vol. i. p. 116. the reader will solve according to the 

influence of prejudice or probability on 

his mind 

INFERENCE 

As then, the so called Apostles' Creed, is admitted to have been 
written by no such persons as the Apostles, and with respect to the 
high authority which has for so many ages been claimed for it, is a 
convicted imposture and forgery ; the equity of rational evidence will 
allow weight enough, even to a probable conjecture, to overthrow all 
that remains of its pretensions* The probability is, that it is really a 
Pagan document, and of Pagan origination ; since, even after the 
trifling alteration and substitution of one name perhaps for another, to 
make it subserve its new application, it yet exhibits a closer resem- 
blance to its Pagan stock, than to the Christian stem on which it has 
been engrafted. 

By a remarkable oversight of the keepings and congruities of the 
system, the Christian creed has omitted to call for our belief of the 
miracles or prophecies which constitute its evidence, or for our practice 
of the duties which should be the test of its utility. 

If, then, as the learned and judicious Jeremiah Jones, in his excellent 
treatise on the canonical authority of the New Testament, most justly 
observes, " In order to establish the canon of the New Testament, it 
be of absolute necessity that the pretences of all other books to canoni- 
cal authority be first examined and refuted:"* much more must it be 
absolutely necessary to establish the paramount and distinctive chal- 
lenges of Christianity, that we should be able to refute and overthrow all 
the pretences of previously existing religions, by such a cogency and fair- 
ness of argument, as, in being fatal to them, shall admit of no applica- 
tion to this, which battering down their air-built castles, shall, when 
brought to play with equal force on Christianity, leave its defences 
unshaken, and its beauty unimpaired. 

• Vol I. p. 16. 8vo. Ed. 



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12 8TATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD 

CHAPTER III. 

87ATB OF THB HEATHEN WORLD. 

It is manifestly unwortny of any cause, in itself containing an in- 
trinsic and independent excellence, that its advocates should condescend 
to set it off by a foil, or to act as if they thought it necessary to decry 
and disparage the pretension of others, in order to magnify and exalt 
their own. It is certain that the vileness of falsehood can add nothing 
to the glory of truth. Showing the various systems of heathen idolatry 
to be, how vile soever, would be adducing neither evidence nor even 
presumption for the proof of the divinity of a system of religion that was 
not so vile, or even if you please, say infinitely superior ; as a beautiful 
woman would certainly feel it to be but an ill compliment to her 
beauty, to have it constantly obtruded upon her observance, how 
hideously deformed and monstrously ugly were those, than whom she 
was so much more beautiful 

As it would not be fair to take up our notion of the Christian religion 
from the lowest and most ignorant of its professors, and still less, 
perhaps, to estimate its merits by the representations which its known 
and avowed enemies would be likely to give; the balance of equal 
justice on the other side, will forbid our forming our estimate of the 
ancient paganism from the misconceptions of its unworthy votaries, or 
the interested detractions and exaggerations of its Christian oppo- 
nents. 

The only just and honourable estimate will be that which shall judge 
of paganism, as Christians would wish their own religion to be judged 
— by its own absolute documents, by the representations of its advo- 
cates, and the admissions of its adversaries. 

When it is borne in mind, that a supernatural origination or divine 
authority is not claimed for these systems of theology, there can be no 
occasion to fear their rivalry or encroachment on systems founded on 
such a claim ; and still less, to decry, vituperate, and scandalize these, 
as any means of exalting or magnifying those. There cannot be the 
least doubt, that in dark and barbarous ages, the rude and unlettered 
part of mankind would grossly pervert the mystical or allegorical sense, 
if such there were, in the forms of religion propounded to their ob- 
servance, or imposed on their simplicity ; while it is impossible, that . 
those enlightened and philosophical characters, who have left us in their 
writings the most undoubted evidence of the greatest shrewdness of , 
intellect, extent of enquiry, and goodness of heart, should have under- J 
stood their mythology in no better or higher signincancy than as it wa 



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STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. IS 

understood by the ignorant of their own persuasion, or would be re* 
presented by their enemies, who had the strongest possible interest in 
defaming and decrying it. When the worst is done in this way, Christi- 
anity would be but little the gainer by being weighed in the same 
scales. Should we be allowed to fix on the darkest days of her eleven 
hundred years of dark ages, and to pit the grossest notions of the 
grossest ignorance of that day, as specimens of Christianity, against 
the views which Christians have been generally pleased to give as re- 
presentations of paganism ; how would they abide the challenge, "look 
on this picture and on this ?" Those doctrines only, of which no form 
or forms of the previously existing paganism could ever pretend the 
same or the like doctrines, can be properly and distinctively called 
Christian. That degree of excellence, whose very lowest stage is raised 
above the very highest acme of what is known and admitted to have 
been no more than human, can alone put in a challenge to be regarded 
as divine. That which was not known before, is that only which a 
subsequent revelation can have taught 

To justify the claims, therefore, of such a subsequent revelation, we 
must make the full allowance, and entirely strike out of the equation, 
all quantities estimated to their fullest and utmost appreciation, which 
are, and have been claimed, as the property of pre-existent systems ; 
and as they were not divine, while it is pretended that this is, the dis- 
covery of a resemblance between the one and the other, can only be 
feared by those who are conscious that they are making a false pre- 
tence. Resemblance to a counterfeit is, in this assay, proof of a 
counterfeit Brass may sometimes be brought to look like gold, but 
the pure gold had never yet the ring and imperfections of any baser 
metal. 

At the time alleged as that of the birth of Jesus, all nations were 
living in the peaceful possession and practice of the several systems ot 
religious faith which they had, as nations or as families, derived from 
their ancestors, in an antiquity lying far beyond the records of historical 
commemoration. Christians generally claim for this epocha of time 
the truly honourable distinction of being the ^pacific age** The be- 
nign influence of letters and philosophy was at this time extensively 
diffused through countries which had previously laid under the darkest 
ignorance ; and nations, whose manners had been savage and barbarous, 
were civilized by the laws and commerce of the Romans. The Chris- 
tian writer, Oro8iu8> maintains that the temple of Janus was then shut, 
and that wars and discords had absolutely ceased throughout the world ; 
* which, though an allegorical, and very probably an hyperbolical repre- 

* Mosbeim, vol. I. chap. 1. 



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14 STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. 

•entation of the matter, is at least an honourable testimony to the then 
state of the heathen world. 

The notion of one supreme being was universal. No calumny could 
be more egregious, than that which charges the Pagan world with ever 
having lost sight of that notion, or compromised or surrendered its 
paramount importance, in all the varieties and modifications of Pagan 
piety.* This predominant notion (admits Mosheim) showed itself, even 
through the darkness of the grossest idolatry. 

The candour which gives the Protestant Christian credit for his 
professed belief in the unity of God, even against the conflict of his 
own assertion of believing at the same time in a trinity of three per* 
sons, which are each of them a God ; the fairness which respects the 
distinction which the Catholic Christian challenges between his Latria 
and Doulia, his worship of the Almighty, and his veneration of the 
images of the saints, will never suppose that the divinity of the inferior 
deities was understood in any sense of disparagement to the alone su- 
preme and undivided godhead of their " one first— one greatest — only 
Lord of all* 

The evidences of Christianity must be in a labouring condition in- 
deed, if they require us to imagine that a Cicero, Tacitus, or Pliny were 
worshippers of wood or stone ; or to force on our apprehensions such a 
violence, as that we should imagine that the mighty mind that had 
enriched the world with Euclid's Elements of Geometry, could have 
bowed to the deities of Euclid's Egypt, and worshipped leeks and 
crocodiles. 

Orthodoxy itself will no longer suggest its resistance ,to the only 
faithful and rational account of the matter, so elegantly given us by 
Gibbon.f " The various modes of worship which prevailed in the 
Roman world, were all considered by the people as equally true, — by 
the philosopher, as equally false* — and by the magistrate, as equally 
useful. 

" Both the interests of the priests and the credulity of the people 
were sufficiently respected. In their writings and conversation, the 
philosophers of antiquity asserted the independent dignity of reason ; 
but they resigned their actions to the commands of law and custom. 
Viewing with a smile of pity and indulgence the various errors of the 
vulgar, they diligently practised the ceremonies of their fathers, de- 
voutly frequented the temples of the gods ; and sometimes condescend- 

9 All the inferior deities in Homer are represented as thus addressing the supreme 
Jove : — 

* ' Oh, first and greatest OOD ! by gods adored, 

We own thy power, oar father and our lord." — Iliad. 

f Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i. chap. 2, p. 46. 



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STATE OP THE HEATHEN WORLD. IS 

ing to act a part on the theatre of superstition, they concealed the 
sentiments of an atheist under the sacerdotal robe. Reasoners of such 
a temper were scarcely inclined to wrangle about their respective modes 
of faith, or of worship. It was indifferent to them what shape the folly 
of the multitude might choose to assume ; and they approach with the 
tame inward contempt, and the same external reverence to the altars 
of the Lybian, the Olympian, or the Capitoline Jupiter." 

It was a common adage among the Greeks, Qav^arm p*paw — Miracles 
forfooU ; and the same proverb obtained among the shrewder Ro- 
mans, in the saying, Vulgus vult decipi — decipiatur, " The common 
people like to be deceived — deceived let them be." 

The Christian, perhaps, may boast of his sincerity, but a moment's 
thought will admonish bira how little virtue there is in such a quality, 
when it forces a necessity of hypocrisy on others. Sincerity should be 
safe on both sides of the hedge. It was never taken for a virtue in an 
unbeliever. 

" Every nation then had its respective gods, over which presided one 
more excellent than the rest ; M and the degree of this pre-eminency, as 
versified by Pope, from the 6th book of the Iliad, is an absolute vindi- 
cation of the Pagan world from the charge of the grosser and more 
revolting sense of Polytheism. They were virtually Deists. None of 
their divinities were thought to approach nearer to the supremacy of 
the father of Gods and men, than the various orders of the Cherubim 
and Seraphim, to the God and Father of Jesus Christ. 

Who bat behold his utmost skirts of glory, 



And far off, his steps adore." 

So in the language of their Iliad (and language has nothing more 
sublime) we read the august challenge : 

" Let down our golden everlasting chain, 
Whose strong embrace holds heaven, and earth, and main j 
Strive all of mortal or immortal birth, 
To drag by this the thunderer down to earth. 
Ye strive in vain. If I but lift this hand, 
I heave the heavens, the ocean, and the land ; 
For such I reign unbounded and above, 
And such are men, and gods, compared to Jove." 

Mosheim, upon an evident misunderstanding, assumes that their 
supreme deity, in comparison to whom the gods and goddesses were as 
far off from an absolute divinity, as ever were the guardian angels and 
tutelary saints of Christianity ; was himself believed to be subject to 

* Gibbon • Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. i. p. 49, 50. 



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16 STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. 

the rigid empire of the fates, or what the philosophers called eternal 
necessity. But the word /ate, by its derivation from the natural in- 
dication of command — Fiat ! Be it so ; may satisfy us, that nothing 
more was meant, than that the supreme deity was bound by his own 
engagements, that his word was irrevocable, and that all his actions 
were determined and guided by the everlasting law of righteousness, 
and conformed to the counsels and sanctions of his own unerring mind 
So that He, and He alone, could say with truth, 

- Necessity and chance 



Approach me not, and what I will— is fate." 

" One thing, indeed," says our authority (Mosheim), " appears at 
first sight very remarkable — that the variety of religions and gods in 
the heathen world, neither produced wars nor dissentions among the 
different nations."* A diligent and candid investigation of hisitoical 
data will demonstrate, that from this general rule, there is no valid and 
satisfactory instance of exception. The Greeks may have carried on a 
war to recover lands that had been distrained from the possession of 
their priests ; and the Egyptians may have revenged the slaughter of 
their crocodiles ; but these wars never proppsed as their object, the in- 
solent intolerance of forcing their modes of faith or worship on other 
nations. They were not offended at their neighbours for serving other 
divinities, but they could not bear that theirs should be put to death. 
And i£ perhaps, where we read the word divinities, we should under- 
stand it to mean nothing more than favourites ; and instead of saying 
that people worshipped such and such things, that they were exces- 
' sively or foolishly attached to them ; considering that such language 
owes its original modification to Christian antipathies, it might be 
brought back to a nearer affinity to probability, as well as to charity. 
An Egyptian might be as fond of onions, as a Welchman of leeks, a 
Scot of thistles, or an Irishman of shamrock, without exactly taking 
their garbage for omnipotence^ 

" Each nation suffered its neighbours to follow their own method of 
worship, to adore their own gods, to enjoy their own rites and cere- 
monies, and discovered no displeasure at their diversity of sentiments 
in religious matters. They all looked upon the world as one great 
empire, divided into various provinces, over every one of which, a 
certain order of divinities presided, and that, therefore, none could be- 
hold with contempt the gods of other nations, or force strangers to pay 
homage to theirs." 

* Their religion had not made fools of them. 

t Who that wished to be a thriving wooer, e>er hesitated to drop on his knee and adore 
his mistress ? " With my body I thee worship. "—Matrimonial Service. 



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STATE OF THE HEATHEN WORLD. 17 

The Romans exercised this toleration in the amplest manner. As- 
the sources from which all men's ideas are derived, are the same, 
namely, from their senses, there being no other inlet to the mind there 
by, there is nothing wonderful in the general prevalence of a sameness 
of the ideas of human beings in all regions and all ages of the world. 
The affections of fear, grief, pain, hope, pleasure, gratitude, &c., are as 
common to man as his nature as a man, and could not fail to produce a 
corresponding similarity in the objects of his superstitious veneration. 
To have nothing in common with the already established notions of 
mankind, to bear no features of resemblance to their hallucinations and 
follies, to be nothing like them, to be to nothing so unlike, should be 
the essential predications and necessary credentials of the •* wisdom 
which is from above." 

It has, however, been alleged by learned men, with convincing argu- 
ments of probability, " that the principal deities of all the Gentile 
nations resembled each other extremely, in their essential characters ; 
and if so, their receiving the same names could not introduce much 
confusion into mythology, since they were probably derived from one 
common source. If the Thor of the ancient Celts, was the same in 
dignity, character and attributes with the Jupiter of the Greeks and 
Romans, where was the impropriety of giving him the same name ? 
Dies Jovis is still the Latin form for our Thorns day. When the Greeks 
found in other countries deities that resembled their own, they persuaded 
the worshippers of those foreign gods that their deities were the same 
that were honoured in Greece, and were, indeed, themselves convinced 
that this was the case. In consequence of this, the Greeks gave the 
names of their gods to those of other nations, and the Romans in this 
followed their example. Hence we find the names of J.upiter, Mars, 
Mercury, Venus, &c, frequently mentioned in the more recent monu- 
ments and inscriptions which have been found among the Gauls and 
Germans, though the ancient inhabitants of those countries had wor 
shipped no gods under such denominations." — Note in Mosheim. 

To have been goddess-born, heaven descended ; to have " lived and 
died as none could live and die," to have been believed to have done 
and suffered great things for the sake of mankind, but, above all, to 
have propitiated, the wrath of the superior Deity, and to have con- 
quered the invisible authors of mischief, in their behalf, was such an 
overwhelming draft on the tender feelings, the excitement of which is 
one of the strongest sources of pleasure in our nature, that the best 
hearts and the weakest heads never gave place to the coolness and 
apathy of scepticism. Not a doubt was entertained that a similar 
series of adventures was proof of one and the same hero, and that the 
Grecian Apollo, the Phoenician Adonis, the iEsculapius of Athens, the 
3 c 



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hi STATE OP THE HEATHEN WORLD. 

Osiris of Egypt, the Christ of India, were but various names of the 
self-same deity ; so that nothing was so easy at any time, as the busi- 
ness of conversion. Not incredulity, but credulity, is the character- 
istic propensity of mankind. 

A disposition to adopt the religious ceremonies of other nations, to 
multiply the objects of faith, to listen with eagerness to any thing that 
was offered to them under a profession of novelty, to believe every pre- 
tence to divine revelation, and to embrace every creed, presents itselt 
in the history of almost every society of men, and is found as inalien- 
able a characteristic of uncivilized, or but partially civilized man, as 
cunning is of the fox, and courage of the lion. Unbelief is no sin 
that ignorance was ever capable of being guilty of; to suspect it of the 
Gentile nations previous to the Christian era, is to outrage all infer- 
ences of our own experience, and to suppose the human race in former 
times to have been a different species of animals from any of which the 
wonder-loving and credulous vulgar of our own days could be the de- 
scendants. 

Of all the miracles that could be imagined, the miracle of a miracle 
not being believed, would be the most miraculous, the most incongruous 
in its character, and the nearest to the involving a contradiction in its 
terms. If proof of a truth so obvious were not superfluous, the Chris- 
tian might be commended to the consideration of authorities, to whose 
decision he is trained and disposed to submit. 

His Paul of Tarsus finds, in the city of Athens, an altar erected to 
the Unknown Gods ;* and taking what Le Clerk considers a justifiable 

* " Quamvis plurali numero legeretur • inscriptio ayyawrroK Geo*;, recte de 
Deo Ignoto, locutus est Paulus. Quia plurali numero continetur singularis." 
— Cleric. H. G. A. 52, p. 374. There is sufficient evidence, however, that 
Paul read the inscription correctly ; so that the commentator's ready quibble 
is not called for. 

The various translations given of this text, make a good specimen of the 
difficulty of coming at the real sense of any ancient legends. 

THE GREEK. THE LATIN. 

2t*0s*s h o ITauAof tv juwm rov apwoy- Stans antem Paulus in medio Areo- 
irovvw iQn *v$,tg aSwow* xctra, iravrob psgi, ait, Viri Athenensis, per omnia 
u$ dW*&w/Aov£cmpou$ vfjMi §wpv quasi superstitiores vos aspicio. 

1. DR. LARDNER'S TRANSLATION. 

* Paul, therefore, standing up in the midst of the Areopagus, said, Ye men 
of Athens, I perceive that ye are in all things very religious." 

2. UNITARIAN VERSION. 

" Then Paul stood in the midst of the court of Areopagus, and said, Y« 



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THE STATE OF THE JEWS. 19 

liberty with the inscription, compliments the citizens on such a proof of 
their predisposition to receive the God whom he propounded to them, 
or any other, as well without evidence as with it, and to be converted 
without putting him to the trouble of a miracle. Acts xvii. 22. 

The inhabitants of Lystra, upon only hearing of the most equivocal 
and suspicious case of wonderment that could well be imagined, even 
that a lame beggar, who might have been hired for the purpose, or pro- 
bably had never been hired at all, had been cured, or imagined himself 
cured, by two entire strangers, itinerant Therapeutae, or tramping quack* 
doctors, without either enquiry or doubt, set up the cry, " That Jupiter 
and Mercury were come down from heaven in the shape of these quack- 
doctors ;" and frith all the doctors themselves could do to check the 
intensity of their devotion, " scarce restrained they the people that they 
had not done sacrifice." — Acts xiv. 18. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE STATE OF THE JEWS 



The grand exception to the harmonious universalism of religions, 
and to that entire prevalence, as far as religion was concerned, of 
" peace on earth and good will among men," which arose from the 
practical conviction of a sentiment which had passed into a common 
proverb, " Deorum injuries, Diis curje," that *' The wrongs of the 
gods were the concerns of the gods" occurred among a melancholy and 
misanthropic horde of exclusively superstitious barbarians, who, from 
their own and the best account that we have of them, were colonized from 
their captivity, by a Babylonian prince, on the sterile soil of Judea, 

men of Athens, I perceive that ye are exceedingly addicted to the worship 
of demons./ 

3. ARCHBISHOP NEWCOMB'S VERSION 

"Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are somewhat too 
religious." • 

4. COMMON VERSION 

« Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious." 
These various translators, however, did not mean exactly to discover, that 

religion and superstition were convertible terms. — Six, is one thing, and half a 

dozen is another. 



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20 THE STATE OF THE JEWS. 

about twenty»three hundred years ago ; and, by the exclusive, unsocial, 
and uncivilized character of their superstition, were exposed to frequent 
wars and final dispersion. The exclusive character of their supersti- 
tion, and the constant intermarriage with their own caste or sect, have, 
to this day, preserved to them, in all countries, a distinct character. 
These barbarians, who resented the consciousness of their inferiority 
in the scale of rational being, by an invincible hatred of the whole 
human race, being without wit or invention to devise to themselves an 
original system of theology, adopted from time to time the-conceits of 
the various nations, by whom their rambling and predatory tribes had 
been held in subjugation. They plagiarised the religious legends of the 
nations, among whom their characteristic idleness and inferiority of un- 
derstanding had caused them to be vagabonds ; and pretended that the 
furtive patch-work was a system of theology intended by Heaven for 
their exclusive benefit. There is, however, nothing extraordinary in 
this ; the miserable and the wretched always seek to console themselves 
for the absence of real advantages, by an imaginary counterbalance of 
spiritual privilege. An' let them be the caterers, they shall always be 
the favourites of Omnipotence, and their afflictions in this world, shall 
be to be overpaid with a " far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
glory," in another. In some instances it will be found, that the means 
of detecting the original idea has been washed down the stream of 
time. The Jews, who, probably, always were, as they are at present, 
the old-clothes-men of the world, have had but little difficulty in 
scratching up a sufficient freshness of nap upon borrowed or stolen 
theology to disguise its original character. Very often, however, has 
their idleness betrayed their policy, and left us scarcely, so much as an 
alteration of names to put us to the trouble of a doubt. 

They give us the story of the sacrifice of the Ipthegenia, the daughter 
of Agamemnon, as an original legend of a judge of Israel, who had im- 
molated his daughter to Yahouh, or Jao, without so much as respecting 
the wish to be deceived, not even being at the pains to vary the name 
of the heroine of the fable. By a division of the syllables into two 
words, Ipthi-genia is literally Jeptha's daughter ; and even the name of 
Moses himself, as it stands in the Greek text, is composed of the same 
consonant letters as Mises, the Arabian name of Bacchus, of whom 
precisely the same adventures were related, and believed, many ages 
before there existed a race known on the earth as the nation of Israel, 
or any individual of that nation capable of committing either truth or 
falsehood to written documents. There have been dancing bears, sa- 
gacious pigs, and learned horses in the world, but the Jews are as inno- 
cent as any of them of the faculty of original invention. 

Their strong man (Samson) carrying away the gates of Gaza, is 



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THE STATE OP THE JEWS. 21 

scarcely a various reading from the story of Hercules' pillars at Gades, 
Cades, or Cadiz. 

That this melancholy race of rambling savages had derived the prin- 
cipal features of their theology from the deities of Egypt, is demonstrable 
from the literal identity of the name of the god of Memphis, Jao, with 
that of the boasted God of Abraham, of Isaac, -and of Jacob, who are 
each of them believed to have been either natives or very long residents 
of that country. 

Moses himself, on the face of their own report, was confessedly an 
Egyptian priest. The Jewish Elohim were the decans of the Egyp- 
tians 5 the same as the genii of the months and planets among the 
Persians and Chaldeans ; and Jao, or Yahouh, considered merely as 
one of these beings generically called Elohim or Alehim, appears to 
have been only a national or topical deity. We find one of the 
presidents of the Jewish horde, negotiating with a king of the Amo- 
rites, precisely on these terras of a common understanding between them. 
" Wilt not thou possess that which Chemosh, thy Alehim, giveth thee 
to possess — so whomsoever Jao, our Alehim, shall drive out from before 
us, them will we possess."* 

Nor is it at all concealed, that the power of Jao, as much as any 
other topical god, was confined to the province over which he presided. 
" The Jao Alehim of Israel, fought for Israel, + and Jao drave out the 
inhabitants of the mountain ; but could not drive out the inhabitants 
of the valley, because they had chariots of iron. J" The first com- ' 
mandment of the decalogue involves a virtual recognition of the 
existence, and rival, if not equal, claims of other deities. " Thou 
shalt have none other god* but me, " is no mandate that could 
have issued from one who had been entirely satisfied of his own 
supremacy, and that those to whom he had once revealed himself • • 
were in no danger of giving a preference to the idols of the Gentiles. 
To say nothing of the highest implied compliment to those idols, in the 
confession . of Jao, that he was jealous of his people's attachment. 
" / the Lord thy God am a jealous God," Exod. xx. He was Lord of 
Heaven and earth, &c, in such sense as the Emperor of China, the 
Grand Sultan, &c— by courtesy. 

It would be difficult to imagine, and surely impossible to find, among 
all the formularies of ancient Paganism, any manner of speaking as- 
cribed to their deities more truly contemptible, more egregiously absurd 
and revolting to common sense, than the language which their lively 
oracles put into the mouth of their deity. Sometimes he is described 

• Judges xi. 24. f Joshua x. 42. 

X Judges i. 19. And note well, that this Chemosh, called in 1 Kings xi. 7, the abo- 
mination of Moab, is none other than the Christian Messiah, or Sun of Righteousness, 
ofMalachiiii. 20 oriv.2. 



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» STATE OP THE JEWS. 

as roaring like a lion, at others as hissing like a snake, as burning with 
rage, and unable to restrain his own passions, as kicking, smiting, 
cursing, swearing, smelling, vomiting, repenting, being grieved at his 
heart, his fury coming up in his face, his nostrils smoking, &c. For 
which our Christian divines have invented the apology, " that these 
things are spoken thus, in accommodation to the weakness of human 
conceptions," and a»$p*ro*r«$«*s as humanly suffering ; without, however, 
allowing benefit of the same apology, to throw any sort of palliation 
over the grossness of the literal sense of the Pagan theology. It is well 
known that the Pagan worship by no means involved such a real pros* 
tration of intellect, and such an absolute surrender of the senses and 
reason as is involved in the Christian notion of paying divine honours. 
It often meant no more than a habit of holding the thing so said to be 
worshipped, in a particular degree of attachment, as many Christians 
carry about them a lucky penny, or a curious pebble, keepsakes or me- 
mentos of past posterity, or something which is to recal to their minds 
those agreeable associations of idea, which 

" Lingering haunt the greenest spot 
On mem'ry's waste." 

Thus the Egyptian's worship of onions, however, at first view ridicu- 
lous and childish, and exposing him to the scorn and sarcasm both of 
Christian and Heathen satirists ;* in his own view and representation 
of the matter (which surely is as fairly to be taken into the account as 
the representations of those who would never give themselves the trou- 
ble to investigate what had once moved their laughter), by no means 
implied that he took the onion itself to be a god, or forgot or neglected 
its culinary uses as a vegetable. The respect he paid to it referred to 
a bigh and mystical order of astronomical speculations, and was purely 
emblematical. The onion presented to the eye of the Egyptian vision- 
ary, the most curious type in nature of the disposition and arrangement 
of the great solar system. " Supposing the root and top of the head to 
represent the two poles, if you cut any one transversely or diagonally, 
you will find it divided into the same number of spheres, including each 
other, counting from the sun or centre to the circumference, as they 
knew the motions or courses of the orbs (or planets) divided the fluid 
system of the heavens into ; and so the divisions represented the courses 

* Porrum et cepe nefas violare et frangere morsu. 
O sanctas gentes, quibus haec nascuntur in hortis 
Numina ! Juvenal Sat. 15. lin. 9. 1 1. 

A sin, forsooth, to violate and break by biting the leek and onions. holy people, 

in whose gardens these divinities are born / 



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L 



STATE OP THE JBWS. 23 

of these orbs." This observation of Mr. Hutchinson* has since been 
made or borrowed by Dr. Shaw, who observes, that " the onion, upon 
account of the root of it, which consists of many coats enveloping each 
other, like the orbs (orbits) in the planetary system, was another of 
their sacred vegetables."')' Our use of these observations, however, is 
only to supply a demonstration that the grossest forms of apparent 
nonsense and absurdity in which Paganism ever existed, were never 
more distressed for a good excuse, or the pretence of some plausible 
emblematical and mystical sense, than Judaism, and that if we acquit 
the Jewish religion from the charge of extreme folly, there was never 
any religion on earth that could be fairly convicted of it. 

The plurality of the Hebrew word Aleim, for GW, in the first 
chapter of Genesis, and in the Old Testament throughout, is urged by 
orthodox divines as an argument for their favorite doctrine of the Holy 
Trinity. 

The Jews find their text thus burthened with a sense which they 
themselves disclaim. A similar plural word — the heavens— expres- 
sive of precisely the same sense, where plurality is by no means the 
leading idea, is found in our own language, and among all nations 
whose ideas of deity were drawn as our own evidently are, from the 
visible heavens, the imaginary ceiling of an upper story, in which the 
deity was supposed to reside. 

The Hebrew D^DtP Shemmin, and the Chaldee WDttf Sheramai, are 
in like manner plural words — literally, the heavens, and used synony- 
mously with &r)b& Alehim — the Gods— for God.J 

. The pagans used the same plural words, the gods, for God, although 
it was to one being alone that in the stricter sense that title was appli- 
cable. We use precisely the same plural form, " Heavens defend us /" 
synechdochically for God defend us ! as in that beautiful and moral 
apostrophe in King Lear — 



-Take physic, pomp 



Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel, 

That thou may'st shake the superflux to them, 

And show the heavens more just. " Shakspsare. 

that is, show God more just. 

This our adherence to the Pagan phrase, happens to be consecrated 

• His works, vol. 4. p. 262. f Shaw's Travels, p. 350. 

J Daniel iv. 29. " Thy kingdom shall be sure unto thee after that thou 
shalt have known that the heavens do rule/' t. e. that God, t. e. that the 
most high, above our heads, doth rule. By the heavens, says Park hurst, are 
signified the true Alehm, or persons of Jehovah. Heb. Lex. p. 741. 1. 



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24 STATE OF THE JEWS 

by the text of the New Testament,* in which the kingdom of the hea- 
vens, and the kingdom of God, and God, and the heavens, are perfectly 
synonymous, and used indifferently for the expression of precisely 
the same sense. Not a plurality of three, then, nor of any definite 
number, was implied by that plural noun used with the verb singular, in 
the Jewish Mehim, but merely that vague reference to the planets, 
from which the very name of God is derived,! and to which the primi- 
tive idea of all the multifarious modifications of idolatry or piety, 
superstition or religion, may ultimately be traced. The Jews themselves 
are as justly chargeable with polytheism, as the nations whose spiritual 
advantages they affect to despise. 

Their historian, Josephus, who lived and wrote about sixty years 
after Christ, sought in vain for the testimony of Egyptian authors to 
support the high pretensions he advanced. Not one has so much as 
mentioned the prodigies of Moses, or held out the least glimpse of 
probability or coincidence to his romantic tale, 

The whole fable of Moses, however, will be found in the Orphic verses 
sung in the orgies of Bacchus, as celebrated in Egypt, Syria, Asia 
Minor, and Greece, for ages before such a people as the Jewish nation 
were known to be in existence. (See the chapter on Bacchus, in this 
Diegesis.) 

Christianity, however, is not so essentially connected with tne Jewish 
religion as to stand or fall with it. Paley, and other of the shrewder advo- 
cates of the established faith, have intimated their wisfrthat the two systems 
were considered as more independent of each other than they are gener- 

Matt. xxi. 25.— Mark xi. 30, 31. Luke xv. 18. xx. 4, />.— John iv. 27. 
H fZounXuoc twv ovpavwv. The kingdom of the heavens and the 

H PoKnXsiot, rov veov. kingdom of God are throughout Mat- 

thew and Mark interchangeable. 

f ©so; which is the source of the iEolic dialect, or Latin Deus, from Qw 0ee», 
< urrere, to run as do the planets. . 

The Grecian philosophers generally believed tnat nature is God. No authors 
of any order of "Christians whatever, in their writings, give us any positive idea 
on the subject, nor indeed any negative one, not derived from some or other of 
those philosophers. 

" The Yesus of the New Testament preached only a sort of indeterminate, or, at 
most, only Pharisaical deism. Those who have professed and called themselves 
Christians, have been hardly such characters as any rational mfnd could imagine 
to have been the followers of such a master. Animated only with a furious zeal 
against idolatry, to which Yesus does not allude, these iconoclasts (image-breakers) 
seemed to have maintained few positive metaphysical dogmata, till they wanted 
excuses for plundering from one another the plunder of Paganism." — I take this 
sentence from a treatise, entitled Various Definitions of an Important Word, p. 18 
in a printed but unpublished work of a learned and excellent friend. 



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STATE OF THE JEWS. 96 

ally held to be. There might be evidence enough left for the Christian 
religion, though the Mosaic dispensation were considered as altogether 
fabulous ; and some have thought, that the evidence of Christianity 
would gain by a dissolution of partnership ; and a man might be the 
better Christian, as he certainly would be better able to defend his 
Christianity, by throwing over the whole of the Old Testament as inde- 
fensible, and contenting himself entirely with the sufficient guidance 
and independent sanctions of the New. " The law was given by Moses, 
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ,"* is an apothegm which 
which Christians receive as of the highest authority : and yet no con* 
ceivable sense can be found in those words, short of an indication not 
only of distinctness, but of absolute contrariety of character, between 
the two religions. " Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ," in the 
antithesis, can imply nothing else than that neither grace nor truth came 
by Moses ; to say nothing of those innumerable contemptuous manners 
of speaking of the old dispensation, as " those weak and beggarly ele- 
ments"^ and that " burthen which neither they nor tlteir fathers were 
able to bear /'$ " all that ever came before me are thieves and robbers ;"§ 
in which Christ and the apostles themselves refer to the religion of 
Moses. Certainly, none with whom we have to deal would ever care 
to defend Judaism, if once induced to doubt the independent challenges 
of Christianity. If this be untenable, that may very well be left, to shift 
for itself in the wardrobes of Holywell Street and the Minories. '*' The 
lion preys not upon carcases !" 

It is unquestionable, however, that even if the gospel story were al- 
together a romance, and all its dramatis persona*, as connected with 
what is called in poetical language its machinery, merely imaginary, it is 
still a romance of that character, which mixes up its fantastical person- 
ages with real characters, and fastens events which never happened, 
speeches which were never spoken, and doings which were never done, 
or persons, times, and places that had a real existence, and stood in 
the relations assigned to them. 80 that the romance is properly drama- 
tical, and answers to the character of such ingenious and entertaining 
fictions as in our own days are called romances of the particular century 
to which they are assigned, in which of course we have the Sir Row- 
lands, Sir Olivers, and Sir Mortimers of the author's invention, trans- 
acting business and holding dialogues with the Saladins, King Richards, 
Henrys, and Edwards of real history. Nor are there wanting instances 
of plagiarism in the department of fiction. A shrewd novelist will 
often avail himself of an old story, will change the scene of action from 

• John i. 17. t Galat. ix. 

J Acts xv. 10. § John x. 8. 

4 J> 



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76 STATE OP THE JEWS. 

one country to another, throw it further back, or bring it lower down, 
in the order of time ; and make the heroes of the original conceit, con- 
temporaries and comrades of either an earlier or a later race of real 
personages. 

" Josephus and heathen authors have made mention of Herod, Arche- 
laus, Pontius Pilate, and other persons of note, whose names we meet 
with in the Gospels and Acts of the Apostles, and have delivered nothing 
material concerning their characters, posts, and honours, that is different 
from what the writers of the New Testament have said of them." 

Such is the first of Dr. Lardner's arguments for the credibility of the 
gospel history, the sophism of which will in an instant start into obser- 
vance, upon putting the simple questions — What is material ? And is 
it no fatal deficiency that they should have omitted to mention, what 
they by no possibility could have omitted to mention had the personages 
so spoken of been so concerned in the gospel history, as they are therein 
represented to have been ? 

One of the most striking coincidences of the scriptural and profane his* 
tory, is the reference to the death of Herod, in Acts xii. 21, 23, as com- 
pared with the account given by Josephus, whose words are, " Having 
now reigned three whole years over Judea, Herod went to the city 
Cresarea. Here he celebrated shows in honour of Caesar. On the 
second day he came into the theatre dressed in a robe of silver of most 
curious workmanship. The rays of the sun, then just rising, reflected 
from so splendid a garb, gave him a majestic and awful appearance. 
In a short time they began in several parts of the theatre flattering ac- 
clamations, which proved pernicious to him. They called him a god, 
and entreated him to be propitious to them, saying, * Hitherto we have 
respected you as a man, but now we acknowledge you to be more than 
mortal.' The King neither reproved these persons, nor rejected their 
impious flattery. Soon after this,* casting his eyes upwards, he saw 
an owl sitting upon a rope over his head. He perceived it to be a 
messenger of evil to him, as it had been before of his posterity, and was 
grieved at heart. Immediately after this he was affected with extremely 
violent pains in his bowels, and turning to his friends, in anguish said, 
* I, your God, am required to leave this world ; fate instantly confuting 
the false applauses you have bestowed on me; I, who have been called 
immortal, am hurried away to death ; but God's appointment must be 
submitted to/ These pains in his bowels continually tormenting him, 
he died on the fifth day, in the fifty-fourth year of his age, and of his 
reign the seventh." 

* AvotKv^etg $'&* rov fivGona tj? tnvru xe$aXn? wrcpxa3i£b/uyoy «£« fir* vypviu 
rtfog guyysXov rt rovrov tvQvs twtjcrw kxkuv «v«t toy xou «*owti t» ayoOwy yttopiyov 
xau }&Kot$m w^y oJuvw. Antiq. lib. 19. c. 8. sect. 2. 



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STATE OF THE JEWS. 27 

There is a curious ambiguity in the Greek word for messenger (angelos), 
of which Eusebius availing himself! says nothing about the owl, but 
gives as the text of Josephus, that he beheld an angel hanging ever 
his head upon a rope, and this he knew immediately to be an omen of eviL* 
Lardner justly reproves this fault in Eusebius, but has no reproof for 
the author of the Acts of the Apostles, who was privileged to improve 
the story still farther, by adding that the angel of the Lord smote him 
because he aave not God the clary (L e. the spangles and gaudery of hia 
silver dress). This Herod was a deputy king holding his power under 
the appointment of Caius Caligula. 

The Pharisees were a set of self-righteous and sanctimonious hypo- 
crites, ready to play into and keep up any religious farce that might 
serve to invest them with an imaginary sanctity of character, and increase 
their influence over the minds of the majority, whose good nature and 
ignorance in all ages and countries, is but ever too ready to subscribe 
the claims thus made upon it. 

They were the Quakers of their day, a set of commercial, speculating 
thieves, who expressed their religion in the eccentricity of their garb ; 
and, under professions of extraordinary punctiliousness and humanity, 
were the most over-reaching, oppressive, and inexorable of the human 
race. Of this sort was the apostolic chief of sinners, and this character 
he discovers through all accounts of his life and writings, that have 
entailed the curse of his example on mankind. 

The Sadduckes were a set of materialists, who, as they were too 
sensible to be imposed on themselves, were the less disposed to cajole 
others. They were the most respectable part of the Jewish community, 
and by the influence of their more rational tenets and more moral ex- 
ample, served to infuse that leaven of reason and virtue, without which 
the frame of society could hardly be held together. 

It is enough to know, in addition to the more than enough that every 
body may know, of the Mosaic institutions, that the pretensions of the 
Jews, as a nation, to philosophy, never exceeded that of the dark and 
hidden science which they called the Cabbala, which, like their hidden 
theology, was nothing more than the Oriental philosophy, plagiarized 
and modelled to their own conceit, and a crude jumble of the various 
melancholy notions, which had forced themselves upon their minds in 
the course of their rarablings into the adjacent countries of Egypt and 
Phoenicia, and the little that ignorance itself could not help learning, 
in the course of their traffic with the Greeks, Persians, and Arabians. 

Their sacred scriptures of the Old Testament contain no reference to 

* Avm,xv\*q it m; tavrw xf$«ta? wripxa§t£ofxt*» ti$tj ayyiAof t*-« aypuwu tins* 
Twtw fw9v> twnart xeexaw uvcu amo*.— £useb, Eccl. Hist. lib. 2. c. 9. 



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9ft STATE OP TUB JEWS. 

the Platonic doctrine of a future state.* Though the metaphysical notion 
of the immortality of the soul, had been inculcated and embraced in 
India, in Assyria, in Egypt, and in Gaul, and was believed with so in- 
fluential and practical a faith, that its votaries would lend their money 
to be returned them again in the other worldf (a proof of sincerity less 
equivocal than martyrdom itself). Yet this doctrine appears to have 
been wholly unknown to the Jewish legislator, and is but darkly insinu- 
ated in any part of the prophetical writings.} Hence the Sadducees, 
who, according to Josephus, respecting only the authority of the Pen- 
tateuch (or five books of Moses), had no belief in a resurrection, angels 
or spirits, or any such chimerical hypostases. Nor does the Christ of 
the New Testament seem to have had the least idea of the possible ex- 
istence of the soul, in a state of separation from the body. All his at- 
tempts to alarm the cowardice and weakness of his hearers, are founded 
on the assumption, that the body must accompany the soul in its ana- 
basis to heaven, or its descent to hell, and indeed that there was no 
virtual distinction between them. It must, however, be admitted to be 
a good and valid apology for the omission — that none of his followers 
have been able to supply the deficiency. 



CHAPTER V. 

STATE OF PHILOSOPHY. 



There is nothing that can be known of past ages, known with more 
unquestionable certainty, than that in, about, and immediately, after the 
epocha of time ascribed to the dawning of divine light, the human mind 
seems generally to have suffered an eclipse. The arts and sciences, 
intelligence and virtue, were smitten with an unaccountable palsy. The 
mind of man lost all its energies, and sunk under a generally prevailing 

* The only reward proposed for obedience to the law of God, was, that at- 
tached to the fifth, which is called by the Apostle, the first commandment with 
promise — "that thy days may be long in the land." 

f Vetus ille mos Gallorum occurrit (says Valerius Maximus 1. 2. c. 6. p. 10), 
cjuos memoria proditum est, pecunias mutuas dare solitos quae his, apud inferos 
redderentur. 

I It is better for thee to enter halt into life, than having two feet to be cast into 
hell. It is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than 
having two eyes, to be cast into hell fire. — Mark ix. 45. 47. Here was no idea 
of heaven, or the state of the blessed, above a hospital of incurables. 



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STATE OF PHILOSOPHY. 99 

imbecility. We look in vain among the successors of Cicero, Lhy, 
Tacitus, Horace, and Virgil, the statesmen, orators, and poets of the 
golden age of literature, for a continuation of the series of such orna- 
ments of human nature. A blight had smitten the growth of men's 
understandings ; not only no more such clever men rose up, but, with 
very few exceptions, no more such men as could have appreciated the 
talents of their predecessors, or possessing so much as the relative 
degree of capacity, necessary to be sensible of the superiority that had 
preceded them. After reasonings so just, and eloquence so powerful, 
that even so late after the revival of literature as the present day, man- 
kind have not yet learned to reason more justly, or to declaim more 
powerfully ; a race of barbarous idiots possessed themselves of the seat 
of science and the muses ; and all distinction and renown was sought 
and obtained by absurdities disgraceful to reason, and mortifications 
revolting to nature. " The groves of the academy, the gardens of Epi- 
curus, and even the porticoes of the Stoics, were deserted as so many 
different schools of scepticism or impiety, and many among the Romans 
were desirous that the writings of Cicero should be condemned and 
suppressed by the authority of the senate."* 

The reasoning of which all men see the absurdity, when applied by 
the victorious Caliph to justify the destruction of the library of Alex- 
andria, t appeared unanswerable when adduced on the side of the true 
faith. 

Omar issued his commands for the destruction of that celebrated 
library to his general, Amrus, in these words ; " As to the books of 
which you have made mention, if there be contained in them what ac- 
cords with the book of God (meaning the Koran of Mahomet), there is 
without them, in the book of God, all that is sufficient. But if there be 
any thing in them repugnant to that book, we in no respect want them. 
Order them, therefore, to be all destroyed." — Harris. 

Precisely similar in spirit, and almost in form, are the respective de- 
crees of the Emperors Constantine and Theodosius, which generally ran 
in the words, " that all writings adverse to the claims of the Christian 
religion, in the possession of whomsoever they should be found, should 
be committed to the fire," as the pious Emperors would not that those 
things which they took upon themselves to assume, tended to provoke 
God to wrath, should be allowed to offend the minds of the pious.£ 
Mr. Gibbon, in his usual strain of caustic sarcasm, mentions the elabo- 

* Gibbon, ch. 16. 

t The destruction of this celebrated library gave safety to the evidences of the 
Christian religion. 

t See the decrees quoted in ray Syntagma, p. 35. 



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SO STATE OF PHILOSOPHY. 

rate treatises which the philosophers, more especially the prevailing 
sect of the new Platonicians, who endeavoured to extract allegorical 
wisdom from the fictions of the Greek poets, composed ; and the many 
elaborate treatises against the faith of the Gospel, which have since 
been committed to the flames, by the prudence of orthodox emperors. 
The large treatise of Porphyry against the Christians consisted of thirty 
books, and was composed in Sicily about the year 270. It was against 
the writings of this great man especially, who had acquired the honour- 
able addition to his name of the virtuous, that the exterminatory 
decree of Theodosius was more immediately directed. There is little 
doubt, that had the discoveries his writings would have made been per- 
mitted to come to general knowledge, all the pretended external 
evidence of Christianity must have been given up as wholly untenable. 
But while what the virtuous Porphyry had really written, was com- 
mitted to the flames, a worse outrage was committed against his reputa- 
tion, by Christians, who, aware of the great influence of his name and 
authority, ascribed the vile trash which they had composed themselves 
to him, for the purpose of making him seem to have made the admis- 
sions which it was for the interest of Christianity that he should have 
made, or to have attacked it so feebly, as might serve to show the 
advantage of their defences. The celebrated treatise on the Philosophy 
of Oracles, which even the pious Doddridge, and the learned Mack night, 
have ascribed to this great man, and availed themselves of, for that 
fraudulent purpose, has, by the greater fidelity and honesty of Lardner, 
been demonstrably traced home to the forging hands of Christian 
piety.* 

Before the Christian religion had made any perceptible advance 
among mankind, two grand and influential principles characterized all 
the moving intelligence that then existed in the world ; and to these 
two principles, Christianity owed its triumph over all the wisdom and 
honesty that feebly opposed its progress. These principles were, — the 

SUPPOSED NECE8SITY OP DECEIVING THE VULGAR, and THE IMAGINED 
DUTY OP CULTIVATING AND PERPETUATING IGNORANCE. Of the 

former of these principles, the most distinguished advocates were the 
whole train of deceptive legislators ; Moses in Palestine, Mneues (if he 
be not the same; in Egypt, Minos in Crete, Lycurgus in Lacedsemon, 
Numa in Rome, Confucius in China, Triptolemus, who pretended the 
inspirations of Ceres, Zaleucus of Minerva, Solon of Epimenides, Za- 
molxis of Vesta, Pythagoras, and Plato.t Euripides maintained that 

* Titg, fti* ix Xoy*iw $iAm$MK* See this expose in my Syntagma, p. 116. 
f It will be seen that I have largely availed myself of my friend's printed but 
unpublished work on Deisidemony. 



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STATE OP PHILOSOPHY ft] 

in the early state of society, some wise men insisted on the necessity 
of darkening truth with falsehood, and of persuading men that there is 
an immortal deity, who hears and sees and understands our actions, 
whatever we may think of that matter ourselves.* Strabo shows at 
great length the geneal use and important effects of theological fables. 
•• It is not possible for a philosopher to conduct by reasoning a multi- 
tude of women, and of the low vulgar, and thus to invite them to piety, 
holiness, and faith ; but the philosopher must also make use of supersti- 
tion, and not omit the invention of fables, and the performance of 
wonders. For the lightning, and the aegis, and the trident, and the 
thyrsolonchal arms of the gods, are but fables ; and so is all ancient 
theology. But the founders of states adopted them as bugbears to 
frighten the weak-minded."* 

Varro says plainly, " That there are many truths which it is useless 
for the vulgar to know, and many falsities which it is fit that the 
people should not know are falsities."} 

Paid of Tarsus, whose fourteen epistles make up the greater part of 
the bulk of the New Testament, repeatedly inculcates and avows the 
principle of deceiving the common people, talks of his having been 
upbraided by his own converts with being crafty and catching them 
with guile,§ and of his known and wilful lies abounding to the glory 
of God.|| For further avowals of this principle of deceit, the reader 
may consult the chapter of Admissions. 

Accessory to the avowed and consecrated principle of deceit, was 
that of ignorance. St. Paul, in the most explicit language, bad 
taught and maintained the absolute necessity of extreme ignorance, in 
order to attain celestial wisdom, and gloried in the power of the Al 
mighty as destroying the wisdom of the wise, and bringing to nothing 
the understanding of the prudent ; and purposely choosing the foolish 
things, and the weak things, and the base things, H as objects of his 
adoption, and vessels of his grace. And St. Peter, or whoever was 
the author of the epistles ascribed to him, inculcates the necessity of 
the most absolute prostration of understanding, and of a state of mind 
but little removed from slobbering idiotcy, as necessary to the acquisi- 
tion of divine knowledge ; that even " as new born babes, they should 
desire the sincere milk of the word, that they might grow thereby."** 

* Quoted in the pseudo Plutarchean treatise, de placitis philos. B. 1. chap. 7. 

f Dr. Isaac Vossius, when asked what had become of a certain man of letters, 
answered, bluntly, " he has turned country parson, and is deceiving the vtdjgar."— 

I August. De Cio. Dei. B. 4. 

§ 2 Corinth, xii. 16. || Romans iii. 7. 1T 1 Corinth, i. 27. 

** 1 Peter ii. 2. 1 Thes. ii. 7, " Even as a nurse cherisheth her children." 
Compare also 2 Coriuth. xi. 23, where Paul says, " I speak as a fool " which he 
need not have said. 



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•9 STATE OP PHILOSOPHY. 

Upon the sense of which doctrine, the pious and orthodox Tertul- 
lian glories in the egregious ridiculousness of the Christian religion, 
and the debilitating effects which the sincere belief of it had produced 
on his own understanding : his main argument for it being, " I reverence 
it, because it is contemptible ; I adore it, because it is absurd ; I believe 
it, because it is impossible."* 

Nothing was considered more obnoxious to the cause of the gospel, 
than the good sense contained in the writings of its opponents. The 
inveteracy against learning, of Gregory the Great, to whom this 
country owes its conversion to the gospel, was so excessive, that he was 
not only angry with an Archbishop of Vienna, for suffering grammar 
to be taught in his diocese, but studied to write bad Latin himself, and 
boasted that he scorned to conform to the rules of grammar, whereby 
he might seem to resemble a heathen. + The spirit of superstition quite 
suppressed all the efforts of learning and philosophy. 

Christianity was first sent to the shores of England by the missionary 
zeal of Pope Gregory the First, not earlier than the sixth or the be- 
ginning of the seventh century. Our King Alfred, who is said to have 
founded the University of Oxford, in the ninth century, lamented that 
there was not at that time a priest in his dominions who understood 
Latin,} and even for some centuries after, we find that our Christian 
bishops and prelates, the " teachers, spiritual, pastors and masters," of 
the whole Christian community, were Marksmen, u e. they supplied, by 
the sign of the cross, their inability to write their own names.§ 

Though philology, eloquence, poetry, and history, were sedulously 
cultivated among those of the Greeks and Latins, who in the fourth 
century still held out their resistance against the Christian religion, its 
just and honourable historian, Mosheim, admonishes his readers by no 
means to conclude that any acquaintance with the sciences had become 
universal in the church of Christ.|| " It is certain (he adds) that tbe 
greatest part both of the bishops and presbyters, were men entirely 
destitute of learning and education. Besides, that savage and illiterate 
party, who looked upon all sorts of erudition, particularly that of a 
philosophical kind, as pernicious, and even destructive of true piety and 
religion, increased both in number and authority. The ascetics, monks, 
and hermits, augmented the strength of this barbarous faction, and not 
only the women, but also all who took solemn looks, soidid garments, 

* Decarne Christi Semleri, Edit. Halae Magdeburgicae, 1770, vol. 3, p. 352. 
Quoted in Syntagma, page 106. 
+ Dr. Mandeville's Free Thoughts, page 152. 
1 See History of England, almost any one. 
§ Evans's Sketches. 
Q Ecclesiastical History, Cent, 4, part 2, chap. 1, sec. 5, p. 346. 



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STATE OP PHILOSOPHY. SB 

and a love of solitude, for real piety, (and in this number we compre- 
hend the generality of mankind) were vehemently prepossessed in their 
favour.'* 

Happily, the security and permanency given to the once won triumphs 
of learning over her barbarous foes, by the invention of the art of 
printing,* the now extensive spread of rational scepticism, and the 
never again to be surrendered achievements of superior intelligence, 
have forced upon the advocates of ignorance the necessity of expressing 
their still too manifest suspicions and hostility against the cause of 
general learning, in more guarded and qualified terms. But what they 
still would have, the sameness of their principle, the identity of their 
purpose, and the sincerity of their conviction, that the cultivation of 
the mind and the continuance of the Christian religion are incompatible, 
is indicated in the institution of an otherwise superfluous university in 
the city of London, for the avowed purpose of counteracting the well 
foreseen effects, of suffering learning to pass into the world untrammelled 
with the fetters of superstition. The advertisement of subscriptions 
to the intended King's College, in the Timet newspaper, even so late 
as the 16th of this present month of August, in which I write from this 
prison, in the cause and advocacy of intellectual freedom, avows the 
principle in these words :— u We, the undersigned, fully concurring in 
the fundamental PBiHCifLES on which it is proposed to be esta- 
blished, namely, that every principle of general education for the youth 
of a Christian community, ought to comprise instruction in the Chris- 
tian religion, *s an indispensable part ; without which the acquisition 
of other branches of knowledge will be conducive neither to the happi- 
ness nor to the welfare of the state. 9 In other words, and most une- 
quivocally in the sense intended, the utmost extent of learning which 
the university propounds, will never reach to the rendering any of its 
members competent to conflict with the learning of the enemies of the 
Christian faith ; to produce either orators who dare attempt to vie on 
equal grounds with their orators ; readers, who dare trust their con- 
scious inferiority of understanding to reaa\ or writers that shall have 
ability or disposition to answer their writings. The old barbarous po- 

* In the year 1444, Caxton published the first book ever printed in England. 
In 1474, the then Bishop of London, in a convocation of his clergy said, " if we ) 
do not destroy this dangerous invention, it will one day destroy us." The reader i 
should compare Pope Leo the Tenth's avowal, that " it was well known how 
profitable this fable of Christ has been to us" with Mr. Beard's Apology for it, 
in his third letter to the Her. Robert Taylor, page 74, and Archdeacon Paley's 
declaration, that " he could not afford to have a conscience" — See Life of the 
Author, attached to his work on the Evidences of Christianity, p. 11; London, 
12mo. edit. 1826. 

5 x 



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34 STATE OP PHILOSOPHY. 

lioy of Goth and Vandal ignorance, to suppress and commit to th<» 
flames the the writings of Infidels, to decry their' virtues and to im- 
prison their persons ; to shelter conscious weakness under airs of af- 
fected contempt ; to crush the man when they can no longer cope with 
his argument ; to destroy the reasoner, when they dare not encounter 
his reasoning, is still the dernier resource of a system that cannot be 
defended by other means, but must needs be left in the dust from 
whence it sprang, whenever the mind of man shall be allowed to get a 
fair start, without being clogged with it. 

" In consequence of the conquests of the Romans, there arose, im- 
perceptibly, but entirely by the operation of natural and most obvious 
causes, a new kind of religion, formed by the mixture of the ancient 
rights of the conquered nations with those of the Romans. Those na- 
tions, who, before their subjection, had their own gods, and their own 
particular religious institutions, were persuaded by degrees to admit 
into their worship a great number of the sacred rites and customs of 
their conquerors."* And from this conjunction, helped on or retarded 
from time to time by those exacerbations and paroxysms which ever 
attend the fever of religion, as it afflicts the sincerely religious, and the 
policy of those wicked tacticians who have always known how to raise 
or lower the spiritual temperament to their -purpose, arose that hetero- 
geneous compound of all that was good and all that was bad in all 
religions, which, after having existed under various names and modi* 
fications, and gained by gradual usurpations a considerable ascendancy 
over any or all the idolatrous forms from which it hadj>een collected, 
began to be called Christianity. " The wiser part . of mankind, how- 
ever, (says Mosheim), about the time of Christ's birth, looked upon the 
whole system of religion as a just object of contempt and ridicule.'^ 

" About the time of Christ's appearance upon earth ,J there were 
two kinds of philosophy which prevailed among the civilized nations. 
One was the philosophy of the Greeks, adopted also by the Romans; and 
the other, that of the Orientals, which had a great number of votaries 
in Persia, Syria, Chaldea, Egypt, and even among the Jews." 

The Greek and Roman mode of thought and reasoning was designated 
by the simple title of Philosophy.§ 

That of the eastern nations, as opposed to it, was called Ghosti- 

CISM.1T 

The Philosophy, signified only the love and pursuit of wisdom. 



* Mosheim Cent. 1. f Mosheim, Cent. 1, Ch. 1. 

t Oar author means any time about or near the era of Augustus. 
§ H <tn\xrcp<t. f H Trumt. 



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STATE OF PHILOSOPHY. 85 

The Gnosis, signified the perfection and full' attainment of wisdom 
itself. 

The followers of both these systems, as we might naturally suppose, 
split and subdivided into innumerable sects and parties. It must be 
observed, however, that while the Philosophers, or those of the Grecian 
and Reman school, were infinitely divided, and held no common prin- 
ciple of union among themselves, some of them being opposed to all 
religion whatever, the GnoeHcs, or adherents of the oriental system, 
deduced all thc&V various tenets from one fundamental principle, that 
of their common deism, and universally professed themselves to be the 
restorers of the knowledge of God, which was lost in the world. St. 
Paul mentions and condemns both these modes of thought and reason- 
ing ; that of the Greeks, in his Epistle to the Colossians, and that of 
the Orientals, in his first to Timothy* ' 

The Gnosis, or Gnosticism* comprehends the doctrine of the Magi,§ 
the philosophy of the Persians, Chaldeans, and Arabians, and the wis- 
dom of the Indians ah&Egyptians. It is distinctly to be traced in the 
text and doctrines of the New Testament. It was from the bosom of 
this pretended oriental wisdom, thaf the chiefs of those sects, which, in 
the three first centuries, perplexed the Christian church, originally 
issued. The name itself signified, that its* professors taught the way 
to the true knowledge of the Deity. Their most distinguished sect 
inculcated the notion of a triumvirate of beings, in which the supreme 
Deity was distinguished both from the material evil principle, and 
from the creator of this sublunary World. ' ' 

The Philosophy comprehended the Epicureans, the most virtuous 
and rational of men, who maintained that wisely consulted pleasure 
was the ultimate end of man ; the Academics, who placed the height of 
wisdom, in doubt and scepticism; the Stoics, who maintained a forti- 
tude indifferent to all events ; the Aristotelians, who, after their mas- 
ter, Aristotle, held the most subtle disputations concerning God, 
religion, and the social duties, maintaining that the nature of God 
resembles the principle that gives motion to a machine, that it is happy 
in the contemplation of itself* fend entirely regardless of hurtian affairs; 
the Platonists, from their master Plato; who- taught the immortality of 
the soul, the doctrine of the trinity, Of the manifestation of a divine 
man, who should be crucified^ arid the eternal rewards and punishments 

♦Beware, lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.-*- 
Coloss. ii. 8. Avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions or science, 
falsely so Called. — i tW vi., $0. ' l 

§ The Magi, or wise men of the east, (Matthew ii. i),i. e. the Brahmins, who 
first got up the allegorical story of Chrishna. 



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96 STATE OP PHILOSOPHY. 

of a future life ; and from all these resulting the Eclectics, who* as their 
name signifies elected, and chose what they held to be wise and rational, 
out of the tenets of all sects, and rejected whatever was considered 
futile and pernicious. The Eclectics held Plato in the highest reve- 
rence. Tbeir college or chief establishment was at Alexandria in 
Egypt. Their founder was supposed to have been one Potamon, The 
most indubitable testimonies prove, that this Philosophy was in a flou- 
rishing state at the period assigned to the birth of Christ. The Eclec- 
tics are the same whom we find described as the Therapeuts or Essence 
of Philo, and whose sacred writings are, by Eusebius, shown to be the 
same as our gospels. Nought but the supposed expediency of deceiving 
the vulgar, and of perpetuating ignorance, hinders the historian to whom 
1 am, for the substance of this chapter, so much indebted, from acknow- 
ledging the fact, that in every rations! sense that can be attached to 
the word, they were the authors and real founder* of Christianity. 



•<£> 



CHAPTER VL 

ADMISSIONS Off CHJMSTIAX WRXTO&S. 

In studying the writings of the early advocates of Christianity, and fa- 
thers of the Christian church, where we should naturally look for the 
language that would indicate the real occurrence of the facts of the 
gospel, if real occurrences they had ever been ; not only do we find no 
such sort of language, but everywhere, find we* any sort of sophistical 
ambages, ramblings from the subject, and evasions of the very business 
before them, as if on purpose to balk our research and insult our seep* 
ticism. If we travel to the very sepulchre of Christ, we have only to 
discover that he was never there: history seeks evidence of his existence 
as a man, but finds no more trace of it than of the shadow that flitted 
across the wall. The star of Bethtem shone not upon ker path, and 
the order of the universe was suspended without he* observance. She 
asks, with the Magi of the east, " Where is he that is born King of the 
Jews ?* and, like them, finds no solution of her inquiry, but the guidance 
that guides as well to one place as another; descriptions that apply to 
-Esculapius, as well as to Jesus % prophecies, without evidence that they 
were ever prophesied ; miracles, which those who are said to have seen, 
are said also to have denied that they, saw $ narratives without autho- 
rities, facts without dates, and records without names* 



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ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS, V 

Where we should naturally look for the evidence of recentness, and 
a mode of expression suitable to the character of witnesses, or of those 
who had convened with witnesses, we not only find no such modes of 
expression, but both the recorded language and actions of the parties 
are found to be entirely incongruous and out of keeping with the sup* 
position of such a character. We find the discourses of the very first 
preachers and martyrs of this religion outraging all chronology, by 
claiming the honours of an even then remote antiquity for the doctrines 
they taught 

1. We find St Stephen,* the very first martyr of Christianity, in the 
very city where its stupendous events are supposed to have happened, 
and, as our Bible chronologies inform us, within the very year in which 
they happened and ou the very occasion on which, above all others that 
could be imagined, he must and would have borne testimony to them, 
as constituting the evidences of his faith, the justification of his con- 
duct, and the grounds of his martyrdom ; nevertheless, bearing no 
such testimony — yea, not so much as glancing at those events, but 
founding his whole argument on the ancient legends of the Jewish su- 
perstition. What a falling off is there 1 

2. We find St Paul, the very first Apostle of the Gentiles, expressly 
avowing that "he was made a minister of the gospel, which had already 
been preached to every creature under heaven," (Col. i, 2%\ preaching 
a god manifest in the flesh, who had been " believed on in ,the world," 
(1 Tim. iii., 16*) before the commencement of Aw ministry ; and who, 
therefore, could have been no such person as the man of Nazareth, who 
had certainly not been preached at that time, nor generally believed on 
in the world till ages after that time. 

& We find him, moreover, out of all character and consistency of 
circumstance^ assuming the most intolerant airs of arrogance, and snub* 
bing Peter at Antioch as if he were nobody, or had absolutely been 
preaching a false doctrine, of which Paul were the more proper judge 
and the higher authority : a circumstance absolutely demonstrative that 
the Peter of the Acts was no such person as the Peter of the Gospels, 
who would certainly not have suffered himself to be called over the 
coals by one who was but a new setter up in the business, but would in 
all probability have out off his ear, rapt out a good oath or two, or 
knocked him down with his keys, for such audacious presumption. 

4. It is most essentially remarkable, that as these Acts -of the 
Apostles bear internal evidence of being a much later production than 

* SffEi»HEN, a name of the same order as Nfcodemus, Philips Andrew, Alex- 
ander, &c., entirely of Grecian origin, ascribed to Jews, who never had such 
names, nor any like them. 



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S8 ADMISSIONS 09 CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 

the epistles and gospels, and are evidently muted up with the journals 
of real adventures of some travelling missionaries; they are not men- 
tioned with the epistles and gospels which had constituted the ancient 
writings of the Therapeutae. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople, 
(a.©. 393), informs us, that at that time, "this book was unknown to 
many and by others it was despised. " 

5. Mill, one of the very highest authorities in biblical literature, 
tells us, "that the gospels were soon spread abroad, and came into 
all men's hands : but the case was somewhat different with the other 
books of the-NeW Testament, particularly the Acts of the Apostles, 
which were not thought to he so important, and had few transcribers." 

6. And Bsausomb acknowledges, that the ■« book of the Acts had 
not, at the beginning, in the eastern chufchesy the same authority with 
the gospels and* the epistles. 

7. Lardreb, (vol. 2, p. 675), would • rather give St. Chrysostom the 
lie, than surrender to the pregnant consequence of so fetal an admission. 
The gospels were soon received, for they were ready before the world 
was awake. The Acts were a second attempt. "Where we «hould 
look for marks of distinction, as definite as those which must necessa- 
rily and eternally exist between truth and falsehood— between divine 
wisdom and human weakness— -between what man knew by the sugges- 
tion of his own unassisted shrewdness and what he only could have 
known by the further instruction of divine revelation, not only find we 
no such lines or characters of distinction, but, alas! in the stead and 
place thereof, we find the most entire and perfect amalgamation, and 
entire surrender of all challenge 7 to distinction — a complete capitulation, 
going over, and " hatt-fellom-weU»me?' conjunction, • of Jesus arid 
Jupiter. Christianity and Paganism are frankly iavoWed to have been 
never more distinct; from each dtfeer than six from half-a-dozen-— never 
to have been at variance or divided* but by the mere accidental sh^- 
stitution of one set of names for the other, and the very trifling an£ 
immaterial misunderstanding that the new nomenclature had ocea- % 
sioned* • •' l • ■• •• - • : '' 

"Some of the ancientest writers of the church have not scrupled ex- 
pressly to call the Athenian Sockates, and some others of the. best of 
the heathen moralists, by the name of CHuisTiANs, and toaftirm, that 
as the law was as it* were a schoolmaster to bring the Jews unto Christ, 
so true moral philosophy was to tfee Gentiles a preparative to receive 
the gospel/'-^Cfarfe' * Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, 
p. 284. 

8.* " And those who lived according to the Logos, (says Clemens 

* Kou o* fAtToc \oytt Guacranriq, X9 iar ™ VOi tt<r *» **** *Swt tvopirSnovts otoy tt 
EWim jj.iv tvKfcvrns xot HgotxXfiTo; xsw o» o/aow avrot;.— - Clemens. Alex, Strom 



I * 



ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS. <* 

Alexandrinus) were really Christiana, though they have been thought 
to be Atheists, as Socrates and Heraclitus were among the Greeks 
and such as resembled them." 

9.f For God, says Origen, revealed these things to them, and what- 
ever things have been well spoken. 

104 And if there had been any one to have collected the troth that 
was scattered and diffused, says Lactantiue, among sects and indivi- 
duals, into one, and to have reduced it into a system, there would, 
indeed, have been no difference between him and us. 

11.* And if Cicero's works, says Arnobius, had been read a* they 
ought to have been by the heathens, there would have been no need of 
Christian writers. 

12.§ " That, in our times, is the Christian .religion, (says St. ' 
Augustin) ; which to know and follow is the most sure and certain 
health, called according to that name, but not according to the thing 
itself, of which it is the name ; for the thing itself, which is now called 
the Christian rewgion, really was known to the ancients, nor was 
wanting at any time from the beginning of the human race, until the 
time when Christ came in the flesh, from whence the true religion, 
which had previously existed, began, to be called Christian ; and this 
in our day is the Christian religion, not as having been wanting in 
former times, but as having in later times received this name. 

13.|j "What then? and do the philosophers recommend nothing 
like the precepts of the gospel ?" asks Lactantius. Yes, indeed, they 

t O Qtog yaeavrox tcw/to, x«* oca xaXwj XcXixtou i^an^wru — Orig. ad Cels. 
Bib.6. 

X Quod si extitisset aliquis qui veritatem sparsam per singulos, per setasque 
diffusam coiligeret in unum, ac redigeret in corpus, is profecto non dissentiret a 
nobis — Lactant* lib. 7. 

* So quoted and translated by Tindal, in his " Christianity as Old as (he 
Creation," p. 397. 

§ Ea est nostris temporibus Christiana religio, quam cognpscere ac sequi secu- 1 

rissima et certissima salus est : secundum hoc nomen dictum est non secundum I 

jpsam rem cujus hoc nomen est : nam res ipsa quae nunc Christiana religio nun- ,| 

t cupatur erat et apud antiquos, nee defuit ab initio generis humani, quosque ipse j 

* Christus veniret in came, unde vera religio qua jam erat ceepit appellari Chris 1 

* tiana. Haec est nostris temporibus Christiana religio, non quia pnoribus tempo- j 
1 ribus non fuit, sed quia posterioribus hoc nomen accepiU— Opera Augustmi, , 

vol. 1, p. 12. Basil edit. 1529. 
/ || Quid ergo, nihil ne illi (philosophi) simile prapcipiunt? Immo permulta 

et ad veritatem frequenter. accedunt.. Sed nihil ponderis hahent ila prsecepta, 
{ quia sunt humana, et auctoritate majori id est divina, ilia carent. Nemo iptur 
X credit ; quia tarn se hominem putat esse qui audit, quam est ille qui praecipit— 
I Lactant. lib. 3, ut Citat Clarke, p. 301. 



* 



40 ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 

da rwn many, and often approach to truth ; only their precepts have 
no weight, as being merely human, and devoid of that greater and 
divine authority; and nobody believes, because the hearer thinks him- 
self as much a man, as he is who prescribes them. 

14. Monsieur Dailtee, in his most excellent treatise, called La Be* 
ligion Catholique Romarne y institutSe parNuma PompUe, demon- 
strates, that * the Papists took their idolatrous worship of images, as 
well as all other ceremonies, from the ojd heathen religion/' and 

15. Ludovicus Vivus, a learned Catholic, confesses, that "there 
could be found no other difference between Paganish and Popish wor- 
ship before images, but only this, that names and titles are changed."— 
Quoted in Blount 's Philostratus, p. 133, 114, . % 

16.* Epiphanias freely admits, of all the heretical forms of Chris- 
tianity, — that is, of all that differed from his own — that they were de- 
rived from the heathen mythology. 

17. The Manichees, the most distinguished of all who dissented from 
the established church, and unquestionably the most intelligent and 
learned of all who ever professed and called themselves Christians, 
boasted of being in possession of a work called the Theosophy, or the 
Wisdom of God ; (and such a work we actually find quoted by St. 
Paul, 1 Corinth. 2,) in which the purport was to show,f that Judaism, 
Paganism, and Manicheeism, t. e. as they understood it, Christianity, 
were one and the same religion, and 

18. Even our own orthodox Bishop Burnet, in his treatise De Statu 
Mortuorum, purposely written in Latin, that it might serve for the 
instruction of the clergy only, and not come to the knowledge of the 
laity, because, as he says, " too much light is hurtful for weak eyes," 
not only justifies, but recommends the practice of the most consummate 
hypocrisy, and that, too, on the most awful of all subjects ; and would 
have his clergy seriously preach and maintain the reality and eternity 
of hell torments, even though they should believe nothing of the sort 
themselves.^ 

What is this, but an edition, by a Christian Bishop, of the very sen- 
timent which Cicero reproves in Pagan philosophers: — " Quid ? ii qui 
dixerunt totam de Diis immortalibus opinionem fictam esse ab homini- 
bus sapientibus, Reipublica? causa, ut quos Ratio non posset, eos ad 

* Ex yog fXXwtxw fu&wv vaurcu eu cufteus 0W«f owo* loturat? rtn> arXaw 
x»Ts£aXw. — Hier. 26. n. 16, p. 98, D. 

t £y ti wi*f»Ta* huantveu tw uj^aMO-poy xcu to» itomw/Aoy ksu to» f**nx <xi<r ? ' 
w uteu xou to avro leyfta.— Fabricius, torn. 1, p. 854. 

J Si me tamen audire velis, mallera te penas has dicere indefinitas quain in- 
finitas. -Sed veniet dies, cum non minus absurda, habebitur et odiosa hsc opinio 
quam transubstantiatio hodie.— De Statu Mort. p. 304. 



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ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 41 

officium Religio duceret, Donne omnem religionem funditus sustule- 
runt"— De Nat Dear, lib. l r ch. 42, p. 405. — Can there be any doubt 
that Bishop Burnet, with all his cant about converting the Earl of 
Rochester, vat himself an Atheist ? 

19. Dr. Mosheim, among his many and invaluable writings, pub* 
lished a dissertation, showing the reasons and causes of suppositious 
writings in the first and second century. And all own, says Lardner, 
that Christians of all sorts were guilty of this fraud ; indeed, we may 
say, it was one great fault of the times.* 

20. t " And in the last place, (says the great Casaubon), it mightily 
affects me to see how many there were in the earliest times of the 
church, who considered it as a capital exploit, to lend to heavenly 
truth the help of their own inventions, in order that the new doctrine 
might be more readily allowed by the wise among the Gentiles. These 
officious lies, they wese wont to say, were devised for a good end. 
From which source, beyond question, sprung nearly innumerable books, 
which that and the following age saw published by those who were far 
from being bad men,^ (for we are not speaking of the books of here- 
tics), under the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and of the apostles, 
.and other saints." 

The reader has only to satisfy himself with his own solution of the 
question emergent from such an admission. If those who palmed what 
they knew to be a lie* upon the world, under \he name and sanction of 
a God of truth, are to be considered as still worthy of our confidence, 
and far from being bad men, who are the bad men ? Illud me quoque 
vehementer movet, . 

2 J. "There is scarce any church in Christendom at this day, (says 
one of the church's most distinguished ornaments) which doth not ob- 
trude, not only plain falsehoods, but such falsehoods as will appear, to 
any free spirit, pure contradictions and impossibilities ; and that with 
the same gravity, authority, and importunity, as they do the holy ora- 
cles of God."— Dr. Henry Moore. 

* Lardner, vol.4, p. 524. 

f " Postremo illud quoque me vehementer movet, quod videam primis eccle- 
siee temporibus, quam plurimos extitisse, qui facinus palmarium judicabant, 
caelestem veritatem, ngmentis suis ire adjutum, quo facilius nova doctrina a gen- 
tium sapientibus admitteretur. Officiosa hoc mendacia vocabant bono fine ex- 
cogitata. Quo ex fonte dubio procul, sunt orti libri fere* sexcenti, quos ilia stas 
et proxima viderunt, ab homiriibus mtnime malis, (nam de horeticorum libris 
non loquimur) sub nomine etiam Domini Jesu Christi et apostolorum aliorum- 
que sanctorum publicatos."— -Casaubon, quoted in Lardner, vol. 4, p. 524. 

J Mosheim treats these holy forgers with the same tenderness : " they were 
men (he says) whose intentions were not bad." — Eccl. Hist., vol. 1, p. 109. 
6 p 



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49 ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS. ' 

Here again emerge the anxious queries — Why should not a man 
have a free spirit? and what credit can be due to the holy oracles of 
God, standing on no better evidence of being such, than the testimony 
of those, who we know have palmed the grossest falsehoods on us 
with the same gravity and as of equal authority with those holy oracles ? 
and 

22. " This opinion has always been in the world, that to settle a 
certain and assured estimation upon that which is good and true, it is 
necessary to remove out of the way whatsoever may be an hindrance to 
it Neither ought we to wonder, that even those of the honest, inno- 
cent primitive times made use of these deceits, seeing for a good end 
they made no scruple to forge whole books." — Daillie, on the Use of 
the Fathers, b. J, c. 3. 

Wh&t good end was that, which needed to be prosecuted by the 
forgery of whole books ? 

23. " But if our unrighteousness commend the righteousness of Croa\ 
what shall we say 9" — Rom. Hi, 5. " For if the truth of God hath 
more abounded through my lie, unto his glory, why yet am I also judged 
as a sinner V — Rom. iii, 7. 

24. The apostolic father, Hernias, who was the fellow-labourer of 
St. Paul in the work of the ministry ; who is greeted as such in the 
New Testament; and whose writings are expressly quoted* as of 
divine inspiration by the early fathers, ingenuously confesses, that 
lying was the easily-besetting sin of a Christian. His words are — 

" O Lord, I never spake a true word in my life, but I have always 
lived in dissimulation, and affirmed a lie for truth to all men, and no 
man contradicted me, but all gave credit to my words" To which 
the holy angel whom he addresses condescendingly admonishes him, 
that " as the lie was up now, he had better keep it up, and as in time 
it would come to be believed, it would answer as well as the truth." 

25. Even Christ himself is represented in the gospels as inculcating 
the necessity, and setting the example of deceiving and imposing upon 
the common people, and purposely speaking unto them in parables and 
double entendres, " that seeing, they might see, and not perceive ; and 
hearing, they might hear, but not understand." — Mark iv., 12. 

26. And divine inspiration, so far from involving any guarantee that 

* The words of the text are, " Now thou hearest, take care from henceforth, 
that even those things which thou hast formerly spoken falsely, may, by thy 
present truth, receive credit. For even those things may be credited ; if, for the 
time to come, thou shalt speak the truth, and by so doing thou mayst attain onto 
life." — Archbishop Wake s Genuine Epistles of the Apostolic Fathers, in loco. 
See this article, where Hermas occurs in the regular succession of apostolic 
fathers, in this Diegesis. 



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ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 43 

truth would be spoken under its immediate influence, is, in the scrip* 
ture itself, laid down as the criterion whereby we may know that 
nothing in the shape of truth is to be expected :— " And if the prophet 
be deceived when he hath spoken a thing, /, the Lord, have deceived 
that prophet* 9 — Ezek. xiv., 9. 

27. When it was intended that King Ahab should be seduced to his 
inevitable destruction, God is represented as having employed his faith* 
and piety as the means of his overthrow :— " Note, therefore, the Lord 
hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all thy prophets" — 1 Kings, 
xxii., 23. There were four hundred of them, all speaking under the 
influence of divine inspiration — all having received the spirit from on 
high — all of them the servants of God, and engaged in obeying none 
other than his godly motions, yet lying as fast as if the father of lies 
himself had commissioned them. Such a set of fellows, so employed, 
cannot at least but make us suspect some sort of sarcasm in our Ts 
Deum, where we say, " the goodly fellowship of the prophets praise 
thee." The devil would hardly think such sort of praise a compliment. 
Happy would it have been for Ahab, had he been an Infidel. 

28. The New Testament, however, one might hope, as being a 
second revelation from God, would have given him an opportunity of 
" repenting of the evil he had spoken ;" but, alas ! orthodoxy itself is 
constrained to tremble and adore before that dreadful declaration, 
than which no religion that ever was in the world besides, ever con- 
tained anything half so horrible : — " For this cause, Qod shall send 
them strong delusion that they should believe a lie, that they all might 
be damned" — 2 These, ii., 1 1, 12. Such was to be the effect of divine 
revelation. 

Should, then, our further prosecution of the inquiry proposed by this 
Diegesis lead us to the conviction, that the amount of evidence for 
the pretensions of the Christian religion is as strong as it may be, it 
will yet remain for an inquiry, which we shall never venture to prose- 
cute, whether that strength of evidence itself may not be strong delu- 
sion. Strong enough must that delusion needs be, by which Omnipo- 
tence would intend to impose on the credulity and weakness of his 
creatures. Is it for those who will defend the apparent inferences of 
such a passage, to point out anything in the grossest conceits of the 
grossest forms of Paganism, that might not have admitted of a pallia- 
tive interpretation ? 

29. St Paul, himself, in an ambiguous text, either openly glories in 
the avowal, or but faintly repels the charge of practising a continued 
system of imposture and dissimulation. " For unto the Jews (says he) 
/ became as a Jew, that I might gain the Jews. To the weak, became 



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44 ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 

las weak, thai I might gain the weak; lam made all things to. all 
mefi^-r-l Corinth, ix. 22. 

30. And in a' passage still more pregnant with inference to our great 
inquiry (2 Galat. ii.), he distinguishes the gospel which he preached on 
ordinary occasions, from " that gospel which he preached privately to 
them that were of reputation" 

31. Dr. Mosheim admits, that the Flatonrsts and Pythagoreans held 
it as a maxim, that it was not only lawful, but praiseworthy to deceive, 
and even to use the expedient of a lie, in order to advance the cause of 
truth and piety. The Jews who lived in Egypt, had learned and re- 
ceived this maxim from them, before the coming of Christ, as appears 
incontestibly from a multitude of ancient records, and the Christians 
were infected from both these sources, with the same pernicious error. — 
Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 197. 

32: In the fourth century, the same great author instructs us, " that 
it was an almost universally adopted maxim, that it was an act of 
virtue to deceive and lie, when by such means the interests of the 
church might be promoted." — Vol. 1, p. 189. 

33. And as it regards the fifth century, he continues, " the simplicity 
and ignorance of the generality in those times, furnished the most 
favourable occasion for the exercise of fraud ; and the impudence of 
impostors, in contriving false miracles, was artfully proportioned to the 
credulity of the vulgar : while the sagacious and the wise, who perceived 
these cheats, were overawed into silence by the dangers that threatened 
their lives and fortunes, if they should expose the artifice/' — Mosheim 
Eccl. Hist. vol. 2, p. 1 1. 

34. Nor must we, in any part of our subsequent investigation, quit 
our hold on the important admission of the fact supplied to us by the 
research of that most eminent of critics, the great Semler — that the 
sacred books of the Christian scriptures (from which circumstance, it 
may be, they derive their name of sacred) were, during the early ages of 
Christianity, really kept sacred. M The Christian Doctors (says he) never 
brought their sacred books before the common people, although people 
in general have been wont to think otherwise : during the first ages 
they were in the hands of the clergy only/** I solemnly invoke the 
rumination of the reader to the inferences with which this admission 
teems. I write, but cannot think for him. The light is in his hand : 
what it shall show him must depend on his willingness to see. 

35. How the common people were christianized, we gather from a 

* Christiam doctores non in vulgus pVodebant Hbros sacros, licet soleant pje- 
fiquc aliter opinari, erant tantum in manibus clericorum, priora per s®cula^-» 
Dmertat. in Terlul. 1. § 10, note 57 ; 



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ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 46 

remarkable passage which Mosheim has preserved for us, in the life of 
Chegory, surnamed Thaumaturgus, that is, the wonder-worker: the 
passage is as follows *: 

" When Gregory perceived that the simple and unskilled multitude 
persisted in their worship of images, on account of the pleasures and 
sensual gratifications which they enjoyed at the Pagan festivals, be 
granted them a permission to indulge themselves in the like pleasures 
in celebrating the memory of the holy martyrs, hoping thai; in process 
of time, they would return, of their own accord, to a more virtuous and 
regular course of life. 1 ' The historian remarks, that " there is no sort 
of doubt that, by this permission, Gregory allowed the Christians to 
dance, sport, and feast, at the tombs of the martyrs, upon their respec- 
tive festivals, and to do every thins which the Pagans were accustomed 
to do in their temples during the feasts celebrated in honour of their 
gods." — Mosheim, vol. 1, cent* 2, p. 202. 
• 36. This accommodating and truly Christian spirit was carried to 
such an extent, that the images of the Pagan deities were in some in- 
stances allowed to remain, and continued to receive divine honours in 
Christian churches. The images of the Sybils, of which Gallseus has 
given us prints, were retained in the Christian church of Sienna."t — 
BM& Panth. 2, 237. 

Among the sacred writings which the church has seen fit to deem 
apocryphal, there was a book attributed to Christ himself, in which he 
declares tfcat he was in no way against the heathen gods. — Jones on the 
Canon, vol. i. p. 11. Origen vindicates, without denying, the charge 
of Celsus, " that the Christian Religion contained nothing but what 
Christians held in common with heathens : nothing that was new, or 
truly great." — Bellamy's Translation, chap. 4. 

37. Even under the primitive discipline, and before the conversion 
of Rome, while the church was cautious of admitting into her worship 
any thing that had a relation to the old idolatry ; yet even in this 
period, Gregory Thaumaturgus is commended by his namesake of 
Nyssa, for changing the Pagan festivals into Christian holidays, the 
better to draw the heathens to the religion of Christ J. 

* Cum animadvertisset Gregorious quod ob corporeas delectationes et volup- 
tates, simplex et imperitum vulgus in simulacrorum cuhus errors perraaueiet*- 
permisit eis, ut in memoriam et recordauonem sanctorum mattyrum sese obtecta- 
rent, et in laetitiara eftunderentur, quod sucoessu teraporis aliquando futurum 
esset, ut sua sponte, ad honestiorem et aocuriatiofera vitas ratiouem, transirent." 

t The head of the Jupiter Olympius of Phidias, carved in the mahogany 
transept, officiates, at this day, locum tenens for God Almighty, in the chapel 
of King's College, Cambridge. 

t Nyssen, in Vita Greg. Thaumat. cit. Mtddleton, Letter from Rome, 936. 



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45 ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 

38. Thus Paulinus, a convert from Paganism, of senatorian rank, 
celebrated for his parts and learning, and who became Bishop of Nolo, 
apologises for setting up certain paintings in his episcopal church, dedi- 
cated to Felix the Martyr, " that it was done to draw the rude multi- 
tude, habituated to the profane rights of Paganism, to a knowledge 
and good opinion of the Christian doctrine, by learning from these 
pictures, what they were not capable of learning from books ; «. e, the 
Lives and acts of Christian Saints."— See Works of Paulinus, B. 9. 

39. Pope* Gregory, called the Great, about two centuries later, 
makes the same apology for images or pictures in churches, declaring 
them to have been introduced for the sake of the Pagans ; that those 
who did not know, and could not read the Scriptures, might learn from 
those images and pictures what they ought to worship.* 

40. Paulinus declares the object of these images and pictures to 
have been, " to draw the heathens the more easily to the faith of 
Christ, since by flocking in crowds to gaze at the finery of these 
paintings, and by explaining to each other the stories there represented; 
they would gradually acquire a reverence for that religion, which in- 
spired so much virtue and piety in its professors." 

41. But these compliances, as Bishop Stilting fleet observes, were 
attended with very bad consequences; since Christianity became at 
last, by that means, to be nothing else but reformed Paganism, as to 
its divine worship A 

42. The learned Christian advocate, M. Turretin, in describing the 
state of Christianity in the fourth century, has a well-turned rhetori- 
cism, the point of which is, " that it was not so much the empire that 
was brought over to the faith, as the faith that was brought over to the 
empire: not the Pagans who were converted to Christianity, but 
Christianity that was converted to Paganism.' "J 

43. " From this era, then, according to the accounts of all writers, 
though Christianity became the public and established religion of the 

The good-nature of Gregory is the more commendable, inasmuch as it was a 
grateful return of the like degree of indulgence as has been shown to himself. 
He was taken in to the Christian Ministry, and consecrated a bishop of Christ, 
and wrought miracles, even while he continued a Pagan, and was entirely igno- 
rant of the Christian doctrine. 

• Eph 1, 0, c. 9. 

f See Bishop Stillingfleefs Defence of the charge of Idolatry against the 
Romanists, vol. 5 of his Works, p. 459, where the reader will find the charge 
demonstrably proved against the church of Rome. 

J ** Non iroperio ad fidem adducto, sed et imperii pompa ecclesiam inficiente 
Nonethnicis ad Christum converts, sod et Christ! religione ad Ethnics formwn 
depravata." — Orat. Academ, De Variis Christ. Rel. fatis. 



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ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 4f 

government, yet it was farced to sustain a perpetual struggle for many 
ages, against the obstinate efforts of Paganism, which was openly 
espoused by some of the. emperors ; publicly tolerated and privately 
favoured by others : and connived at, in some degree, by all."— Mid- 
die ton 9 s Letter* from Rome. 

44. Within thirty years after Constantino, the emperor Julian en- 
tirely restored Paganism, and abrogated all the laws which had been 
made against k ; though it is utterly untrue that he was ever guilty of 
any act of persecution or intolerance towards Christians.* The three 
emperors, who next in order succeeded Julian, t. e. Jovian, Valentinian, 
Valens, though they were Christians by profession, were yet wholly 
indifferent and neutral between the two religions, granting an equal 
indulgence and toleration to them both ; so that they may be as fairly 
claimed to be Pagan as Christian emperors. Nor had. even Constan- 
tine himself, the first for whom the designation of a Christian emperor 
has been challenged, accepted the rite of Christian baptism before he 
was dying, or e^er in his life ceased to be, and to officiate as a priest of 
the gods. 

Gratian, the seventh emperor from him, and fourth after Julian, 
though a sincere believer, never thought fit to annul what Julian had 
restored. He was the first, however, of the emperors, whe refused the 
title and habit of the Pontifex Maximus, as incompatible with the Chris- 
tian character. So that till then, up to the year 384, there was no 
actual disunion between Christ and Belial ; no evidence of miracles or 
strength of reason had been offered to attest the superiority of the 
Christian religion, to demonstrate that there was any distinction be- 
tween that and Paganism, or to determine the mind of any one of the 
Roman emperors, that there was an inconsistency in being a Christian 
acid a Pagan at the same time. 

45, The affront put by Gratian upon the Pagan priesthood, in re- 
fusing to wear their pontifical robe, was so highly resented, that one of 
them i3 recorded to have said, smee the emperor refuses to be our Pon- 
tifex Maximus, we will very shortly take care that our Pontifex shall 
be Maximus. 

46. In the subsequent reign of Theodosius, whose laws were gene- 
rally severe upon the Pagans, Symmachus, the governor of Rome, 
presented a memorial in the strongest terms, and w the name of the 
Senate and people of Rome, for leave to replace the altar of victory in 
the senate house, whence it had been removed by Gratian. This me* 
morial was answered by St. Ambrose, who in a letter upon it to the 

* See vindication of his character, in the Lion, vol. i, No. 18. 12 Letter 
from Oakham. 



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4ft ADMISSIONS OF CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 

emperor, observes, that " when the petitioners had so many temples 
ana altars of their own, in all the streets of Rome, where they might 
freely offer their sacrifices, it seemed to me a mere insult on Christi- 
anity, to demand still one altar more ; and especially in the senate 
houses where the greater part were then Christians." This petition 
was rejected by Valentinian, against the advice of all his council, but 
was granted presently after by the Christian emperor, Eugenius, who 
murthered and succeeded him. 

Thus entering on the fifth century, and further surely we need not 
descend, we have the surest and most unequivocal demonstration, that 
Christianity, as a religion distinct from the ancient Paganism, up to 
that time, had gained no extensive footing in the world. After that 
period, all that there was of religion in the world, merges in the pal- 
pable obscure of the dark ages. The pretence to an argument for the 
Christian religion, from any thing either miraculous or extraordinary 
in its propagation is, therefore, a sheer defiance of all evidence and 
reason whatever. 

17. " Pantaenus, the head of the Alexandrian school, was probably 
the first who enriched the church with a version of the sacred writings, 
which has been lost among the ruins of time."- -Mosh. vol. i. 186.— 
Compare with No 34, in this Chapter. 

48. " They all (t. e. all the fathers of the second century) attributed 
a double sense to the words of Scripture, the one obvious and literal, 
the other hidden and mysterious, which lay concealed, as it were, under 
the veil of the outward letter. The former they treated with the ut- 
most neglect," &c.—Ibid. 106. 

49. " God also hath made us able ministers of the New Testament, 
not of the letter, but of the spirit : for the letter killetb, but the 
spirit giveth life." — 2 Corinth, iii. 6. 

50. " It is here to be attentively observed (says Mosheim, speaking 
of the church in the second century), that the form used in the ex- 
clusion of heinous offenders from the society of Christians was at first 
extremely simple ; but was, however, imperceptibly altered, enlarged 
by an addition of a vast multitude of rites, and new modelled accord- 
ing to the discipline used in the ancient mysteries."-— Mosh. vol. i. 
p. 199. * 

51. " The profound respect that was paid to the Greek and Roman 
mysteries, and the extraordinary sanctity that was attributed to them, 
induced the Christians (of the second century) to give their religion a 
mystic air, in order to put it upon an equal footing, in point of dignity 
with that of the Pagans. For this purpose, they gave the name of 
mysteries to the institutions of the gospel, and decorated, particularly 
the holy sacrament, with that solemn title. They used, in that sacred 



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ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 49 

institution, as also in that of baptism, several of the terms employed in 
the heathen mysteries, and proceeded so far, at length, as even to adopt 
some of the rites and ceremonies of which those renowned mysteries 
consisted."— Ibid. 204. 

52. " It may be further observed, that the custom of teaching their 
religious doctrines by images, actions, signs, and other sensible repre- 
sentations, which prevailed among the Egyptians, and indeed in almost 
all the eastern nations, was another cause of the increase of external 
rites in the church." — Ibid. 204. 

53. "Among the human means that contributed to multiply the 
number of Christians, and extend the limits of the church in the third 
century, we shall find a great variety of causes uniting their influence, 
and contributing jointly to this happy purpose. Among these must be 
reckoned the zeal and labours of Origen, and the different works which 
were published by learned and pious men in defence of the gospel. I£ 
among the causes of the propagation of Christianity, there is any place 
due to pious frauds, it is certain that they merit a very small part of 
the honour of having contributed to this glorious purpose, since they 
were practised by few,- and that very rarely. "* ; — Mosheim, vol I. p. 246. 

54. " Origen, invited from Alexandria by an Arabian prince, con- 
verted by his assiduous labours a certain tribe of wandering Arabs to 
the Christian faith. The Goths, a fierce and warlike people, received 
the knowledge of the gospel by the means of certain Christian doctors, 
sent thither from Asia. The holy lives of these venerable teachers, 
and the miraculous powers with which they were endowed, attracted 
the esteem of even a people educated to nothing but plunder and 
devastation, and absolutely uncivilized by letters or science : and their 
authority and influence became so great, and produce^ in process of 
time such remarkable effects, that a great part of this barbarous people 
professed themselves the disciples of Christ, and put off, in a manner, 
that ferocity which had been so natural to them/' — Vol. I. 247. 

55. " Among the superhuman means," which, after all that he has 
admitted, this writer thinks can alone sufficiently account for the suc- 
cessful propagation of the gospel, " we not only reckon the intrinsic 
force of celestial truth, and the piety and fortitude of those who declared 
it to the world, but also that especial and interposing providence, which, 
by dreams and visions, presented to the minds of many, who were 

* How must every ingenuous and virtuous sensibility in man's nature have 
smarted under the distress of being obliged to use language like this. I know 
the map who hath preferred the fate of felons, and would rather still pass only 
from the prison to the tomb, than he would use the like. 

7 Q 



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W ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 

either inattentive to the Christian doctrine, or its professed enemies, 
touched their hearts with a conviction of the truth, and a sense of its 
importance ; and engaged them, without delay, to profess themselves 
the disciples of Christ." 

56. . " To this may also be added, the healing of diseases, and other 
miracles, which many Christians were yet enabled to perform, by in- 
voking the name of the Divine Saviour." — Mosheim, vol. 1. p. 245. 

On these last four most important admissions the reader will observe, 
that it may be enough to remark, that the principle on which this work 
is conducted, so well expressed in its motto, that philosophy which is 
agreeable to nature, approve and cherish ; but that which pretends to 
commerce with the deity, avoid ! pledges us to view all references to 
supernatural agency as being no proof of such agency, but as demon- 
stration absolute of the idiotish stupidity or errant knavery of the party, 
resting any cause whatever on such references. It is not in the former 
of these predicaments, that such an historian as Mosheim can be im- 
peached ; nor could either the emoluments or dignities of the theologi- 
cal chair at Helmstadt, or the Chancellorship of the University of 
Gottingen, allay the smartings Of sentiment and the anguish of conscious 
meanness, in holding them at so dear a price as the necessity of making 
such statements, of thus selling his name to the secret scorn of all 
whose praise wac-worth ambition ; thus outraging his own convictions ; 
thus conflicting with his own statements; thus bowing down his 
stupendous strength of talent to harmonize with the figments of drivel- 
ling idiotcy, making learning do homage to ignorance, and the clarion 
that should have roused the sleeping world, pipe down to concert with 
the rattle-trap and Jews'-harp of the nursery. 

Of the pious frauds, which this historian admits to share only a small 
part of the honour of contributing to the propagation of the gospel, 
because they were " practised by so few," he had not the alleviation of 
his feelings of being able to be ignorant that he has falsified that state- 
ment in innumerable passages of this and his other writings ; and that 
his whole history of the Church, from first to last, contains not so much 
as a single instance of one of the fathers of the church, or first preachers 
of the gospel, who did not practise those pious frauds. 

57. " The authors who have treated of the innocence and sanctity of 
the primitive Christians, have fallen into the error of supposing them 
to have been unspotted models of piety and virtue, and a gross error 
indeed it is, as the strongest testimonies too evidently prove." — 
Ibid. p. 120. 



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Admissions of christian wkiter& 51 

. 58.* (( Such was the license of inventing, so headlong the readiness 
of believing, in the first ages, that the credibility of transactions derived 
from thence, must have been hugely doubtful : nor has the world only, 
but the church of God also, has reasonably to complain of its mystical 
times." — Bishop Fell, $0 rendered in the Author's Syntagma, p. 34. 

59. " The extravagant notions which obtained among the Christians 
of the primitive ages (says Dupin), sprang from the opinions of the 
Pagan philosophers, and from the mysteries which crack-brained men 
put on the history of the Old and New Testament, according to their 
imaginations. The more extraordinary these opinions were, the more 
did they relish, and the better did they like them ; and those who in- 
vented them, published them gravely, as great mysteries, to the simple, 
who were all disposed to receive them.*— -ZtajnVf short history of the 
Churchy vol. 2, c. 4, as quoted by Tindal, p. 224. 

60. " They have but little knowledge of the Jewish nation, and of 
the primitive Christians, who obstinately refuse to believe that such 
sort of notions could not proceed from thence ; for, on the contrary, it 
was their very character to turn the whole scripture into allegory."— 
Archbishop wake's Life of the Apostle Barnabas, p. 73. 

Of the miraculous powers with which Mosheimf would persuade 
us that the Christians of the third century were still endowed, we have 
but to confront him with his own conflicting statement, on the 11th 
page of his second volume : concluding with his own reflection on that 
admission : — "Thus does it generally happen in human life, that when 
danger attends the discovery and the profession of the truth, the prudent 
are silent, the multitude believe, and impostors triumph/' 

Of the dreams and visions, of which he speaks, it is enough to 
answer him with the intuitive demonstration, that such sort of evidence 
for Christianity might be as easily pretended for one religion as another ; 
it is such as none but a desperate cause would appeal to, such as no 
rational man would respect, and no honest man maintain ; not only of 
no nature to afford proof to the claims of a divine revelation, but itself 
unproved ; and not alone unproved, but of its own nature, both morally 
and physically, incapable of receiving any sort of proof. The heart 
smarts Jfor the degradation of outraged reason, for the humiliation of 
torn and lacerated humanity, that a Mosheim should talk of dreams and 

* "Tanta fuit primis sseculis fingendi hcentia,tam pronajn c red en do facilitas, 
ut rerum gestarum fides exinde graviter laboraverat. Neque enim orbis ten-arum 
tantum, sed et Dei ecclesia de temporibussuis mysticis merito quaeratur." — Fell, 
JJishop cf Oxford, quoted by Lardner and Tindal. 

f Vol. 1, p. 247. 



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54 ADMISSIONS OF CHRiblJAN WRITERS. 

visions — that it should come to this ! O Christianity, how great are 
thy triumph* 1 

Of the HEALI5G of diseases, by the invoking of a name. It is 
impossible not to see, that this author did not believe his own argu- 
ment : because it is impossible not to know, that no man in his senses 
could believe it, and impossible not to suspect, that so weak and foolish 
an argument was, by this author, purposely exhibited, -as one of the 
main pillars of the Christian evidence, in order to betray to future times 
how weak that evidence was, and to encourage those who should come 
to live in some happier day, when the choused world might better en- 
dure the being undeceived : — to blow it down with their breath. Beau- 
sobre, Tillotson, South, Watson, Paley, and some high in the church, 
yet living, have given more than pregnant inuendoes of their acting on 
this policy. 

Nothing is more obvious, than that persons diseased in body, must 
labour under a corresponding weakness of mind. There is no delusion 
of such obvious practicability on a weak mind in a diseased body, as 
that which should hold out hopes of cure beyond the promise of nature. 
A miracle of healing is, therefore, of all miracles, in its own nature most 
suspicious, and least capable of evidence. 

It was the pretence to these gifts of healing, that gave name to the 
T%erapeutce % or Healers ; and consequently supplies us with an infalli- 
ble clue to lead to the birth-place and cradle of Christianity. The cure 
being performed by invocation of a name, still lights us on to the germ 
and nucleus of the whole system. Neither slight nor few are the indica- 
tions of this magical or supposed charming operation of the Brutum 
fultnen ; the mere name only of the words Jesus Christ, in the New 
Testament itself; and consequently neither weak nor inconsecutive are 
our reasons, for maintaining that it was in the name, and the name only, 
that the first preachers of Christianity believed. That it was not sup- 
posed by them to be the designation of any person who had really existed, 
but was a vox et prceterea nihil, — a charm more powerful than the 
Abraxas, more sacred than Abracadabra ; in short, those were but the 
spells that bound the services of inferior demons — this conjured the as- 
sistance of omnipotence, and was indeed the God's spell. " There is 
none other name under heaven (says the Peter of the Acts of the 
Apostles) given among men, whereby we must be saved." — Chap. iv. 12. 

61. Origen, ever the main strength and sheet anchor of the advocates 
of Christianity, expressly maintains, that "the miraculous powers 
which the Christians possessed were not in the least owing to enchant- 
ments, (which he makes Celsus seem to have objected,) but to their 



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ADMISSIONS OP CHRISTIAN WRITERS. 5a 

pronouncing the name I. E. S. U. S,* and making mention of some 
remarkable occurrence of his life. Nay, the name of I. E. S. U. S, 
has had such power over demons, that it has sometimes proved 
effectual, though pronounced by very wicked persons."— Answer to 
Belsus, chap. 6. 

62. " And the name of I. E. S. U. S, at this very day, composes 
the ruffled minds of men, dispossesses demons, cures diseases, and works 
a meek, gentle, and amiable temper in all those persons who make 
profession of Christianity, from a higher end than their worldly 
interests." — Ibid, 57. So says Origen. No Christian will for a mo- 
ment think that there is any salving of the matter in such a statement, 
Friar's balsam was found in every case without fail, to heal the wound, 
even after a man's head was cut clean off, provided his head were set 
on again the right way. 

63. " When men pretend to work miracles, and talk of immediate 
revelations, of knowing the truth by revelation, and of more than ordi- 
nary illumination, we ought not to be frightened by those big words 
from looking what is under them ; nor to be afraid of calling those 
things into question, which we see set off with such high -flown pre-* 
tences. It is somewhat strange that we should believe men the more, 
for that very reason upon which we should believe them the less." — 
Clagit's Persuasive to an Ingenuous Trial of Opinions, p, 19, as 
quoted by Tindal, p. 217. 

64. St. Chrysostom declares, " that miracles are only proper to excite 
sluggish and vulgar minds, that men of sense have no occasion for them, 
and that they frequently carry some untoward suspicions along with 
them."— Quoted in Middleton's Prefatory Discourse to his Letter 
from Rt me, p. 104. 

In this sentiment it must be owned, : that the Christian saint strik- 
ingly coincides with the Pagan philosopher Polybius, who considered 
all miracles as fables, invented to preserve in the vulgar a due sense of 
respect for the deity. — Reimmann, Hist. Ath, p. 233. 

65. The great theologian Beausobre, in his immense Histoire de 
Maniche6, torn. 2, p. 568, says,f " We see in the history which I have 

* See similar mystical senses of the epithets, Christ and Chrest, under the 
articles Serapis, and Adrian's Letter. 

f "On voit dans Thistoire que j'ai rapport£e, une sbrte d'hypocrisie, qui 
n'a peut-£tre £te" que trop commune dans tous les terns. C'est que des ecctesi- 
astiques, non settlement* ne disent pas ce qu'ils pensent, mais disent tout le 
contraire de ce qu'ils pensent. Philosophes dans leur cabinet, hors dela, ils 



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54 ESSENES OR THERAPEUTS. 

related, a sort of hypocrisy, that has been, perhaps, but too common 
at all times : that churchmen not only do not say what they think, but 
they do say the direct contrary of what they think. Philosophers in 
their cabinets ; out of them, they are content with fables, though they 
well know that they are fables. Nay more : they deliver honest men 
to the executioner, for having uttered what* they themselves know to 
be true. How many Atheists and Pagans have burned holy men under 
the pretext of heresy ? Every day do hypocrites consecrate, and make 
. people adore the host, though as well convinced as I am, that it is 
nothing but a bit of bread/' 

66. The learned Grotius has a similar avowal : " He that reads 
ecclesiastical history, reads nothing but roguery and folly of bishops and 
churchmen/' — Orotii Epist. 22. 

No man could quote higher authorities. 



CHAPTER VII. 

OF THE ESSENES OR THERAPEUTS. 



* 

A knowledge of the character and tenets of that most remarkable 
set of men that ever existed, who were known by the name of Essenes 
or Thlrapeuts, is absolutely necessary to a fair investigation of the 
claims of the New Testament, in the origination and references of which 
they bear so prominent a part. 

The celebrated German critic, Michaelis, whose great work, the 
Introduction to the New Testament^ has been translated by Dr. Herbert 
Marsh, the present Lord Bishop of Peterborough, defines them as a 
" Jewish' sect, which began to spread itself at Ephesus, and to threaten 
great mischief to Christianity in the time (or, indeed, previous to the 
time) of St. Paul ; on which account, in his epistles to the Ephesians, 

content des fables, quoiqu'iis sachent bien que ce sont des fables. lis font plus; 
ils livrent au bourreau des gens de biens pour Pavoir dit. Combiens d'athees 
et de prophanes ont fait bruler de saints personnages, sous pretexte d'he>£sie 1 
Tous lea jours des hypocrites consacrent et font adorer Phostie, bien qu'ils soient 
aussi convdincus que moi, que ce n'est qu'un morceau de pain.— Ibid. 



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ESSENES OR THERAPEUTS. 5* 

to the Colossians, and to Timothy, he declares himself openly against 
them."* 

Bat sorely this admission of the sect's beginning to spread itself at 
Ephesus, and its existence at Colosse, and in the diocese of Timothy, 
to a sufficient extent to call for the serious opposition of one, who, in 
any calculations of chronology, must have been the contemporary of 
Jesus Christ, is no disparagement of the fact of its previous establish- 
ment in Egypt ; while the admitted fact,f that these three Epistles of 
St. Paul, in which he so earnestly opposes himself to this sect, were 
written before any one of our four Gospels, involves the a fortiori 
demonstration, that their tenets and discipline, whatever they were, were 
not corruptions or perversions of those gospels, however those Gospels 
may turn out to be improvements or plagiarisms upon the previously 
established tenets and discipline of that sect 

The ancient writers, who have given any account of this sect, are 
Philo, Josephus, Pliny, and Solinus. Infinite perplexity, however, is 
occasioned by modern historians attempting to describe differences and 
distinctions, where there are really none. The Therapeutce and the 
Essenes are one and the same sect : the Therapeutce, which is, Greek, 
being nothing more than Essenes, which is of the same sense in 
Egyptian, and is in fact a translation of it : as, perhaps, Surgeons, 
Healers, Curates, or the most vulgar sen*e of Doctors, is the nearest 
possible plain English of Therapeutjs. The similarity of the senti- 
ments of the Essenes, or Therapeutae, to those of the church of Rome, 
induced the learned Jesuit, Nicolaus Serarius, to seek for them an 
honourable origin. He contended, therefore, that they were Asideans, 
and derived them from the Rechabites, described so circumstantially in 
the 35th chapter of Jeremiah ; at the same time he asserted, that the 
first Christian monks were Essenes. 

Both of these positions were denied by his opponents, Drusius and 
Scaliger ; but in respect to the latter, says Michaelis, certainly Serarius 
was in the right 

" The Essenes," he adds, " were indeed a Jewish, and not a Christian 
sect" Why, to be sure, it would be awkward enough for a Christian 
divine to admit them to the honours of that name before " that religion 
which St Augustine tells us ' was before in the world,' began to be 
called Christian/' (See Admission 12.) The disciples were called 
Christians first at Antioch (Acts). But sure, it was something more 
than the name that made them such ; they were none the less what the 

* Michaelis, vol. 4, page ?9. 
t It is admitted by Dr. Lardner. 



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56 ESSENES OH THERAPEUT&. 

name signified, ere yet it was conferred on them : and the Essenes 
had every thing but the name." 

"It is evident," continues Michaelis, "from the above-mentioned 
Epistles of St. Paul, that to the great mortification of the apostle, they 
insinuated themselves very early into the Christian church." 

But is it not, in reason, as likely that the Christians, who were 
certainly the last comers, should have insinuated themselves into the 
Therapeutan community ? 

Eusebius has fully shown that the monastic life was derived from 
the Essenes ; and, because many Christians adopted the manners of 
the Essenes, Epiphanius took the Essenes in general for Christians, and 
confounded them with the Nazarenes : — a confusion to which the 
similarity of this name, to that of the Nazarites of the Old Testament, 
might in some measure contribute. But we find this confusion still 
worse confounded, in the remarkable oversight of the passage, Matthew 
ii.. 23, which betrays that Jesus himself was believed to be one of this 
fraternity of monks.* 

Montfaucon and Helyot have attempted to prove them Christians, 
but have been confuted by Bouhier. Lange has contended that they 
were nothing more than circumcised Egyptians, but has been confuted 
by Henmann. — Marsh's Michaelis, vol. 4. pp. 79, 80, 81. 

" It was in Egypt/' says the great ecclesiastical historian, Mosheim, 
" that the morose discipline of Asceticismf (i. e. the Essenian or 
Therapeutan discipline) took its rise ; and it is observable, that that 
country has in all times, as it were by an immutable law or disposition 
of nature, abounded with persons of a melancholy complexion, and pro- 
duced, in proportion to its extent, more gloomy spirits than any other 
parts of the world. It was here that the Essenes dwelt principally, 
long before the coming of Christ? — Mosheim, vol. I., p. 196. 

* Matthew ii. 23. "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the 
prophets. He shall be called a Nazarene ;" that is (as we see from Epipha- 
nius), a Therapeut. It is certain that none of the Jewish prophets had so 
said. Some other equally sacred writings are referred to. Though their ac- 
complishment by the mere resemblance of the name of the city in which Jesus 
is said to have resided, to that of the order of monks to which he was believed 
to have belonged, is a most miserable pun; The Jews, however, who think it 
reasonable to admit that such a person as Jesus really existed, place his birth 
near a century sooner than the generally assumed epocha. — Basnage Histoire 
des Juifs, 1.5, c. 14, 15. 

f From the Greek ourxw*;, exercise, discipline, study, meditation, signifying 
also self-morlijiction. 






ESSEN GS OR THERAPEUTS. 57 

It is not the first glance, nor a cursory observance, that will suffi- 
ciently admonish the reader of the immense historical wealth put into 
his hand by this stupendous admission, this surrender of the key-stone 
of the mighty arch,-r-this giving up of every thing that can be pre- 
tended for the evidences of the Christian religion. 

This admission of the great ecclesiastical historian (than whom there 
is no greater) will serve us as the Pythagorean theorem — the great 
geometrical element of all subsequent science, of continual recurrence, 
of infinite application — ever to be borne in mind, always to be brought 
in proof— -presenting the means of solving every difficulty, and the clue 
for guiding us to every truth. " Bind it about thy neck, write it upon 
the tablet of . thy heart" -*- Evejix thing of Christianity is op 
Egyptian obigin. 

The first and greatest library that ever was in the world was at 
Alexandria in Egypt The first of that most mischievous of all insti- 
tutions — universities, was the University of Alexandria in Egypt: 
where lazy monks and wily fanatics first found the benefit of clubbing 
together, to keep the privileges and advantages of learning to them- 
selves, and concocting holy mysteries and inspired legitm* to be dealt ^ Hc ( > 
out as the craft should need, for the perpetuation of ignorance and 
superstition, and consequently of the ascendancy of jugglers, and 
Jesuits, holy hypocrites, and reverend rogues among men. 

All the most valuable manuscripts of the Christian scriptures are 
Codices Alexandrinu The very first bishops of whom we have any 
account were bishops of Alexandria. Scarcely one of the more 
eminent fathers of the Christian church is there who had not been 
educated and trained in the arts of priestly frauds, in the University of 
Alexandria, that great sewer of the congregated feculencies of 
fanaticism. 

In those early times the professions of Medicine and Divinity were 
inseparable. We read of the divinity students studying medicine in 
the School, or University of Alexandria, to which all persons resorted, 
who were afterwards to practice in either way, on the weak in body or 
the weak in mind, among their fellow creatures. The Therapeuts, or 
Essenes, as their name signifies, were expressly professors* of the art 
of healing — an art in those days necessarily conferring the most 
mystical sanctity of charity on all who were endued with it, and the 
most convenient of all others for the purposes of imposture and 
wonderment. It was invariably considered to be attainable only by 
the especial gift of Heaven,* and no cure of any sort, or in any way 

* To another the gifts of healing, by the same Spirit. Have all the gift of 
, S • H 



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68 BSSENES OR THERAPBCJTS. 

effected, wad ever ascribed to natural causes merely. Those who, after 
due training in the ascetic discipline, were sent out from the University 
of Alexandria to practice their divinely acquired art in the towns and 
villages, were recognised as regular or canonical apostles : while those 
who had not obtained their credentials from the college, who set up 
for themselves, or who, after having left the college, ceased to recognise 
its appointment, were called false apostles, quacks, heretics, and 
empirics. And in several of the early apocryphal scriptures, we find 
the titles Apostolod and Apostactici (apostolical and apostactical, i. *. 
of the monkish order of Apostactites, or Solitaires,) perfectly synoni- 
mous. Eusebius emphatically calls the apostactical Therapeuts 
apostolical. " Philo" (he says) " wrote also a treatise on the contem- 
plative life, or the Worshippers ; from whence we have borrowed 
those things which we allege concerning the manner of life of those 
apostolical men."t Indeed, Christ himself is represented as describing 
his apostles as members of this solitary order of monks, and being one 
himself: " They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world" 
John xvii. 16. What then but monks ? The seceders or dissenters 
(and of this class was St. Paul)4 upon finding the advantages of set- 
ting up in the trade upon their own independent foundation, pleaded 
their success in miracles of healing, as evidence of their divine com- 
mission; and abundantly returned the revilings of the Therapeutan 
college. 

Unaided by the lights of anatomy, and unfounded on any principles 
of rational science, recovery from disease could only be ascribed to. 
supernatural powers. A fever was supposed to be a demon that had 
taken up his abode in the body of the unfortunate patient, and was to 
be expelled, not by any virtue of material causes, but by incantations, 
spells, and leucomancy, or white magic ; as opposed to necromancy, or 
black magic, by which diseases and evils of all sorts were believed to 
be incurred. The white magic consisted of prayers, fastings, § baptisms, 
sacraments, &c. which were believed to have the same power over 
good demons, and even over God himself, as the black magic had over 
evil demons. and their supreme head, the Devil. The trembling patient 
was only entitled to expect his cure in proportion to his faith, to believe 
without understanding, and to surrender his fortune and life itself to 

healing ? 1 Cor. xii. — Query. How did he spend three years in Arabia, but 
in a course of study for the ministry ? 

t O (Xoyo;) irtph 0ut §E*)p*mx&, n *xetw», i{ a, to- wfpi T« /S*tf t«» avocrroXixov 
flwipwv J^XuXt/Oauiv. — Eccl. Hist, lib. - 2, c. 17. A. J Galat. i. 17. 

§ " Howbeit this kind goeth not out, but by prayer and fasting." Matt. 
xviii..21. * 



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ESSENES OR THERAPEUTS. 59 

the purposes of his physician, and to the business of imposing upon 
others, the deceits that had been practised upon himself. 

Even to this day, the name retained by our sacred writings is derived 
from the belief of their magical influence, as a spell or charm of God, 
. to drive away diseases. The Irish peasantry still continue to tie 
passages of St John's Spell, or St. John's God's-spell, to the horns of 
cows, to make them give more milk ; nor would any powers of rational 
argument shake their conviction of the efficacy of a bit of the wordy tied 
round a colt's heels, to prevent them from swelling. 

It will become physicians of higher claims to science and rationality, 
to triumph over the veterinary piety of the Bog of Allen, when their 
own forms of prescription shall no longer betray the wish to conceal 
from the patient the nature of the ingredients to which he is to trust 
his life, nor bear, as the first mark of the pen upon the paper, the 
mystical hieroglyphic of Jupiter, the talismanic R, under whose in- 
fluence the prescribed herbs were to be gathered, and from whose 
miraculous agency their operation was to be expected. 

The Therapeutss of Egypt, from whom are descended the vagrant *f 
hordes of Jews and Gipsies, had well found by what arts mankind 1 
were to be cajoled ; and as they boasted their acquaintance with the 
sensative qualities of herbs of all countries, so, in their extensive pere- 
grinations through all the then known regions of the earth, they had 
not failed to bring home, and remodel to their own purposes, those 
sacred spells or religious romances, which they found had been success- 
fully palmed on the credulity of remote nations. Hence the Indian 
Chrishna might have become the Therapeutan head of the order of 
spiritual physicians. 

No principle was held more sacred than that of the necesssity of 
keeping the sacred writings from the knowledge of the people. No- 
thing could be safer from the danger of discovery than the substitution, 
with scarce a change of names, " of the incarnate Deity of the Sanscrit 
Romance" for the imaginary founder of the Therapeutan college. What 
had been said to have been done in India, could be as well said to 
have been done in Palestine. The change of names and places, and 
the mixing up of various sketches of the Egyptian, Phoenician, Greek, 
ftad Roman mythology, would constitute a sufficient disguise to evade 
the languid curiosity of infant scepticism* A knowledge within the 
acquisition of only a few, and which the strongest possible interest 
bound that few to hold inviolate, would soon pass entirely from the 
records of human memory. A long continued habit of imposing upon 
others wouid in time subdue the minds of the impostors themselves, 
and cause them to become at length the dupes of their own deception, 
to forget the temerity in which their first assertions had originated, to 



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60 ESSENES OR THEHAPEUTS- 

catch the infection of the prevailing credulity, and to believe their own 
Me. q 

In such, the known* and never -changing laws of nature, \ and the 
invariable operation of natural causes, we find the eolation of every 
difficulty and perplexity that remoteness of time might throw in the 
way of our judgment of past events. 

But when, to such an apparatus of rational probability, we are 
enabled to bring in the absolute ratification of unquestionable 
testimony, — to show that what was in supposition more probable than 
any thing else that could be supposed, was, in fret, that which 
absolutely took place,— we have me highest degree of evidence of 
which history is capable j we can give no other definition of historical 
truth itself* 

The probability, then, that that sect of vagrant quack-doctors, the 
Therapeutae, who were established in Egypt and its neighbourhood 
many ages before the period assigned by later theologians as that of 
the birth of Christ, were the original fabricators of the writings con- 
tained in the New Testament, becomes certainty on the basis of 
evidence, than which history hath nothing more certain*— by the 
ungarded, but explicit — unwary, but most unqualified and positive 
statement of the historian Eusebius, that " those ancient Thevapeutoe 
were Christians, and that their ancient writings were our Gospels and 
Epistles. 9 '* The wonder with which Lardner quotes this astonishing 
confession of the great pillar of the pretended evidences of the Christian 
religion, + only shows how aware he was of the fatal i Deferences with 
which it teems. 

It is most essentially observable,that the Essenes or Therapeuts, in 
addition to their monopoly of the art of healing, professed themselves 
to be Eclectics; they held Plato in the highest esteem, though they 
made no scruple to join with his doctrines, whatever they thought con- 
formable to reason in the tenets and opinions of the other philosophers. 

" These sages were of opinion that true philosophy ,\ the greatest and 
most salutary gift of God to mortals, was scattered in various portions, 
through all the different sects; and that it was, consequently, the duty 

p * The above most important passage of all ecclesiastical records, is in the 
2d book, the 17th chapter, and £3d and following pages of his History. The 
title of a whole chapter (the fourth of the first book) of this work is, that 

THE RELIGION PUBLISHED BY JeSUS CHRIST TO ALL NATIONS IS NEITHER 
NEW NOR STRANGE. 

t Credibility, vol. 2, 4to. p. 362. 

J Observe well, the phrases — " the philosophy — our philosophy," and the 
" true philosophy" occur throughout the .Fathers, in a hundred passages for 
one, where " Christianity" should have been the word. 



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ESSBNES Oft THJEnAP£OT$. 61 

of every wise man to gather it from the several corners where it lay 
dispersed and to employ it, thus re-united, in destroying the dominion 
of impiety and vice."* The principal seat of this philosophy was at 
Alexandria; and " it manifestly appears," says Mosheim,t " from the 
testimony of Philo the Jew, who was himself one of this sect, that this 
(Eclectic) philosophy) of this Essenian or Therapeutan sect) was in a 
flourishing state at Alexandria when our Saviour was upon the earth" 
Ecci. Hist. Cent. 1, p. 1. 

1. We have only to collate the admission of the orthodox Lactan- 
tius, that Christianity itself was the Eclectic Philosophy, inasmuch as 
that " if there had been any one to have collected the truth that was 
scattered and diffused among the various sects of philosophers and 
divines into one, and to have reduced it into a system, there would 
indeed be no difference between him and a Christian : w J 2. To com- 
pare the various tenets and speculations of the different philosophers 
and religionists of antiquity with' the strong and particular snatch of 
the Platonic philosophy, which we actually see pervading the New 
Testament: and to add the weight in all reason and fairness due to 
the positive testimony of that unquestionably learned and intelligent 
Manichsean Christian and bishop, Faustua,— that " it is an undoubted 
fact, that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor' by 
his apostles, but a long while after their time, by some unknown 
persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of 
affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the 
names of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their 
companions, and then said that they were written according to them."-^- 
Faust. lib. 2. 

To this important passage, of which I reserve the original text for 
my next occasion of quoting it,§ I here subjoin what the same high 
authority objects, if possibly with still increasing emphasis, against the 
arguments of St. Augustine rfl — " For many things have been 

* u Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 169. 

f Ibid. p. 37. 

J Admission No. 10, in the chapter of Admissions. 

| In chapter 15. . 

|| " Multa enim a majoribus vestris, eloqniis Domini nostri inserta verba 
sunt ; qua nomine signata ipsius, cum ejus fide non congruant, prassertiai 
Quia, ut jam sape probatum a nobis est, nee ab ipso hac sunt, nee ab ejus 
apastolis scripta, sed muho post eorum assumptioaem, a nescio quibus, et 
lpsis inter se non concordantibus semi-juweis, per famas opinionesque 
cofuperta sunt ; qui tamen omnia eadem in apostolorum Domini conferentes 
nomioa, vel eorum qui secuti apostolos videreotur, errores ac mendacia sua 
secundum cos se scripsisse raentiti sunt."— -Faust, lib. 33, c. 3. 



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62 CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 

inserted by your ancestors in the speeches of oar Lord, which, though 
put forth under his name, agree not with his faith; especially since, 
—as already it has been often proved by us, — that these things were 
not written by Christ, nor his apostles, bnt a long while after their 
assumption, by I know not what sort of half-jews, not even agreeing 
with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions 
merely; and yet, fathering the whole upon the names of the apostles of 
the Lord, or on those who were supposed to have followed the apostles; 
they mendaciously pretended that they had written their lies and con- 
ceits, according to them." The conclusion is irresistible. 



CHAPTER VIIL 



the christian scriptures, doctrines, discipline, and ecclesiastical 
polity, long anterior to the period assigned as that of the birth 
of Christ 

From the more general account of that remarkable sect of philosophi- 
cal religionists, the Egyptian Therapeuts, which we have collected 
from the admissions of the most strenuous defenders of the evidences 
of the Christian religion, we pass into the more immediate sanctuary of 
the sect itself, to learn from the unquestionable authority of one who 
was a member of their community, all that can now be known of what 
their scriptures, doctrines, discipline, and ecclesiastical polity, were. 

On the threshold of this avenue, we only pause to recapitulate, for 
the reader's admonition, the certainties of information already estab- 
lished; which, carrying with him, through the important discoveries to 
which we now approach, he shall with the quicker apprehension discern, 
and with the easier method weigh and appreciate the value of the 
further information to which now we tend. 

1. The Essenes, the Therapeuts, the Ascetics, the Monks, the 
Ecclesiastics, and the Eclectics, are but different names for one and tlie 
self-same sect. 

2. The word Essene is nothing more than the Egyptian word for 
that of which Therapeut is the Greek, each of them signifying healer 
or doctor, and designating the character of the sect as professing to be 
endued with the miraculous gift of healing; and more especially so 
with respect to the diseases of the mind. 



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CHRISTIAN SCMPTURBS ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 03 

3. Their name of Ascetic* indicated the severe discipline and exercise 
of self-mortification, long fastings, prayers, contemplation, and even 
making of themselves eunuchs, for the kingdom of heavens sake,* 
as did Origen, Melito, and others, who derived their Christianity from 
the same school ; and as Christ himself is represented to have recog- 
nised and approved their practice. 

4. Their name of Monks indicated their delight in solitude, their 
contemplative life, and their entire segregation and abstraction from, 
the world; which Christ, in the Gospel, i* in like manner represented 
as describing as characteristic of the community of which he himself 
was a member.f 

5. Their name of Ecclesiastics was of the same sense, and indicated 
their being called out, elected, separated from the general fraternity 
of mankind, and set apart to the more immediate service and honour 
of God. 

6. Their name of Eclectics indicated that their divine philosophy^ 
was a collection of all the diverging rays of truth which were scattered < 
through the various systems of Pagan and Jewish piety, into one bright 
focus — that their religion was made up of "whatsoever things are 
true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just 9 what* ? 
soever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things 
are of good report— if there were any virtue, and if there were any 
praise, 9 ' (Phil. iv. 8,) wherever found; alike indifferent, whether it \ 
were derived from " saint, from savage, or from sage — Jehovah, Jove, 
or Lord;*' 

7- They had a flourishing university or corporate body, established 
on these principles at Alexandria in Egypt, long before the period 
assigned to the birth of Christ. 

8. From this body they sent out missionaries, and had established 
colonies, auxiliary branches, and affiiliatigi communities, in various 
cities of Asia Minor; which colonies were in a flourishing condition, 
before the preaching of St Paul. 

9. Eusebius, from whom all our knowledge of ecclesiastical anti- 
quity is derived, declares his opinion, that the " sacred writings used 
by this sect were none other than our Gospels, "and the writings of the 

* " And there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the 
kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." 
Matt. xix. 12. 

t '• They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world/' John 
xvit. Id. u I pray for them, I pray not for the world" Ibid 9. Surely, the 
world ought to be much obliged to him ! » 



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U CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 

apostles ; and that certain Domes bs, after the manner of allegorical 
interpretations of the ancient prophets, these were their epistles."* 

10. It is certain that the Epistles and Gospels, and the whole system 
of Christianity, as conveyed to us upon the credit of the Fathers, do at 
this day bear the character of being such an Eclectic epitome or 
selection from all the forms of religion and philosophy then known in 
the world, as these Eclectic philosophers professed to have formed. 

11. It is certain that our three first Gospels were not written by the 
persons whose names they bear, but are derived from an earlier draft 
of the evangelical story, which was entitled the Diboesis. 

With these lights in thy hand, enter, reader, on the stupendous vista 
that I unlock for thee, by the best translation I could make, and better 
than any that I could find ready made, of the most important historical 
document in the whole world; whichever be the second in importance. 
The Sixteenth Chapter of the Second Book of Ecclesiastical History, 
of Eusebius Pamphilus. 

" St. Mark, the Evangelist, is said first to have been sent into 
Egypt, and to have preached there the same gospel which he after- 
wards committed to writing. There he established the churches of 
Alexandria ; and so great was the number of both men and women 
that became believers of his first address on account of the more 
philosophical and intense Ascetism, which he both taught and prac- 
tised,) that Philo has seen fit to write a history of their manner of 
living, their assemblies, their sacred feasts, and their whole course of 
life. 

1. He so actually details the manner of living of those who with us 
have been called Ascetics, as to seem not merely the historian of the 
most remarkable tenets, nor as being acquainted with them merely, 
but as having embraced them *, and both joining their religious rites, 
and extolling those apostolic men, who, as it is likely, were descended 
from Hebrews, and who therefore were wont to observe very many of 
the customs of the ancients, after a more Jewish fashion. 

2. In the first place, then, in the discourse which he has written 
concerning the contemplative life, or eg men of prayer ; having pledged 
himself to add nothing to his history of a foreign nature, of his own 
invention, or beyond 'the truth; he mentions that they were called 
healers, or curates, and the women who were among them doctresses 
or Therapeutesses ; adding the reasons of such a designation, that as a 

* Ta^a <Fuxv; » Qww ap%ouw wap avroifMou avyy^ocfx^ccray way yt\ia% *eu 
t*$ ruv omtootoXoji ypa$a$, AIHrHIElE te TiJ*?xara to uko$ t«* ira\a,i crpo^uTw 
epfAWEtmxas — ETrttrroXa*, ravra ctva». — Eustb, EccL Hist, lib, 2, cop. 16.fol.ed. 
Colonics Allobrogum, 1612/ p. 60, ad literam d, tinea 6 



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CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. * 

sort of physicians, delivering the souls of those who applied to them 
from evil passions, they healed and restored them to virtue : or on 
account of their pure and sincere ministry of religion with respect to the 
deity. 

3. Whether therefore, of himself, as writing suitably to their man- 
ners, Fhilo gave them this designation: or whether, indeed, the first 
of that sect took the name when the appellation of Christians had 
aa yet been nowhere announced, it is by no means necessary to dis* 
cuss; 

4. So, at the same time, in his narration, he bears witness to their 
renunciation of property, in the first instance ; 

5. And that, as soon as they begin to philosophise, they divest them* 
selves of all revenues of their estates ; 

6. And then, having laid aside all anxieties of life, and leaving society, 
they make their residence in solitary wilds and gardens y 

7. " For, from the time that they resolved, from enthusiasm and the 
most ardent faith (which indeed was needful), to practise themselves 
in the emulation of the prophetic life, they were well aware that con- 
verse with persons of dissimilar sentiments would be unprofitable And 
hurtful; 

8. Even as it is related in the accredited Acts of the Apostles,* 
that all who were known of the apostles (had imbibed their doctrine) 
were wont to sell their possessions and substance, and divided them 
among all, according as any one had need, so that there was not one 
among them in want ; 

9* For, whoever were owners of estates or houses, as the word\ 
says, sold them, and brought the prices of the things sold, and laid them 
at the apostles' feet, that it might be divided to each as every one had 
need* 

10. Philo relates things exactly similar to .these which we have 
referred to ; bearing witness to their resemblance, even to the letter, 
saving; 

11. For though this race of men are to be found in all parts of the 
world, nor would it be fitting that either Greece or Barbary should not 
participate in so perfect a good, yet they abound in Egypt, in each of 
the provinces, called the Pasturages, and more especially in the neigh- 
bourhood of Alexandria ; 

12. And the best of men, from all parts of the world, betake them- 
selves to the country of the Tberapeutse, as to a colony, in some most 
convenient place; such as is situate near the Lake of Maria,J on a small 

* Acts iv. f Nota bene, J Nota bene. 

9 i 



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40 CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 

eminence, very opportune, both on account of its safety and the agree- 
able temperature of the climate. 

13. And so, after having described what sort of habitations they 
occupied, he speaks of the churches* established throughout the country, 
as follows : • 

14. In each parish there is a sacred edifice which is called the 
temple, and a monastery J in which the monks perform the mysteries 
of the sublime life, taking nothing with them, neither meat nor drink, 
nor any thing necessary for the wants of the body ; but the laws, the 
divinely inspired oracles of the prophets, and hymns, and such other 
things as in which is understanding, and by which true piety is in- 
creased and perfected ; 

15 And among other things, he says, that their religious exercise 
occupies the whole time from morn till evening ; 

16. " For those who preside over the holy scriptures, philosophise 
upon them, expounding their literal sense by allegory ; 

17. Since they hold that the sense of the spoken meaning is of a 
hidden nature, indicated in a double sense.% 

18. They have also the writings of the ancients : and those who were 
the first leaders of their sect, have left them many records of the sense 
conveyed in those allegories : using which as a sort of examples, they 
imitate the manner of the original doctrine .*§ 

19. And these things, it seems, are reported by a man who listened 
to the holy scriptures, as they expounded them ; 

20. And, in short, it is very likely that those scriptures of the 
ancients, of which he speaks, were the Gospels, and the writings of the 
Apostles ; i 

21. And that certain Diegeses, || as it seems, of the ancient prophets, 
interpreted ; such as the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews contains, and 
many others— these were the Epistles. 

22. So, again, he proceeds to write concerning the new Psalms which 
they make : 

23. For they do not confine themselves to contemplation, but they 
compose canticles and hymns to God, arranged conveniently in every 
measure, and in the most sublime sort of metre. 

24. And many other things he relates in the discourse of which we 
treat ; 

25. But these it seemed necessary to recount, in which the character* 
istics of the ecclesiastical institution^ are laid down. 

26. But if it seem to any one that what has been said is not strictly 

• Nota bene. f Nota bene. J Nota bene. 

§ Notabene. || Nota bene. If Nota bene. 



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CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST* fit 

and essentially meant of the gospel polity, but may be thought to 
harmonise with other things than those referred to, he may be convinced 
by the very words of Philo, in order following (so he be but an impartial 
judge), in which he will receive an unanswerable testimony on this 
matter ; for thus he writes : 

27. And laving down temperance* as a sort of temptation to the 
soul, they build the other virtues upon it : 

28. ' Neither meat nor drink do any of them take before sunset,' as 
considering the business of philosophy worthy of the light, but the 
necessities of the body only apt for darkness ; 

29* Whence to this they assigned the day, but only a small part of 
the night to Ma*; 

30. And some of them think not of nourishment for three days, so 
. miich greater is their desire of understanding ; 

31. And some so delight themselves and triumph, as banquetted on 
wisdom, so richly and satisfactorily ministering her doctrine, as to ab- 
stain for a double length of time, and scarce after six days to taste of 
necessary food in the way of eating ! 

32. These clear and indisputable remarks of Philo, we consider to be 
spoken of men of our religion on/y.f 

33. But if any one should be yet so hardened as to contradict these 
things, yet may he be moved from his incredulity, yielding to such 
cogent evidences as can be found with none, but only in the religion 
of Christians, according to the Gospel : % 

34. For he mentions, that even women are found among the men of 
whom we speak, and that many of them are virgins, at an extreme age ; 
preserving their chastity, not from necessity, like the sacred virgins 
among the Greeks, but from a voluntary law, from their zeal and desire 
of wisdom ; 

35* With whom studying to live, they have abjured the pleasures of the 
body, no longer desiring a mortal offspring, but that which is immortal, 
and which is certain that the soul which loves God can alone beget 
upon itself. 

36. From whence proceeding, he delivers these things still more 
emphatically : 

37. That their expositions of the holy scriptures are, by an under- 
sense, delivered in allegories ;§ 

38. For the whole divine revelation to these men seems to resemble 

* EXxforfMw, continence, temperance, abstinence, from whence their name, 
Encratites, or Abstainers. 

f Note bene. J Nota bene. 

§ " Which things are an allegory."— Gal. iv. 24. 



j 



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88 CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES ANTERIOR TO CHRIST. 

an animal, and that the words spoken are the body, bat the tool is the 
invisible sense involved in the words : which it is their religion itself 
which first began to exhibit distinctively, as in a glass, putting the 
beautiful results of the things understood under the indecencies of the 
names. 

39. What need is there to add to these things, their meetings 
together, and their residence, — the men in one place, and the women in 
another? 

40. And the exercises according to the custom this day continued 
among us, and which especially upon the festival of our Saviour's pas- 
sion, we have been accustomed to observe, in fastings, in watchings, 
and in studying the divine discourses ? 

41. And which are kept to this day in the same manner only among 
us : as the same author hath shown most manifestly, and delivered in 
his own writing ; 

42. And especially relating the vigils of the great festival, and the 
exercises in them, and their hymns, which are ths very same as those 
used to be said among us ; 

43. And how, as one of them sang the psalm in a pleasing voice, the 
others leisurely listening, took up the last stanza of the hymns ; and how, 
on the afofe-named days, lying on beds of straw upon the ground, they 
would taste no wine at alL 

44. As he has in so many words written. Nor would they eat any- 
thing that had blood in it;* that water only is their drink; and hyssop, 
bread, and salt, their food. 

45. In addition to these circumstances, he describes the orders of 
preferment among those of them who aspire to ecclesiastical miniatra- 
tions, — the offices of the deacons, the humbler rank, and the supreme 
authority of their bishops^ 

46. Whoever wishes a clear understanding of these matters, may 
acquire it from the afore-mentioned work of this author. . " But that 
Philo wrote these things with reference to those who were the first 
preachers of the discipline which is according to the Gospel, and to the 
manners first handed down from the Apostles, must be manifest to every 
man."J 

* " For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater 
burthen than these necessary things : that ye abstain from meats offered to idols, 

and from blood, and from things strangled, and from • ; from 

which if ye keep yourselves, ye shall do well." — Acts xv. 29. 

t " For they that have used the office of a deacon well, purchase to themselves 
a good degree. — 1 Tim. iii. 13. 

J Ota )i rttf srpwnf? xnpvxa< ms xotra to cvowiXk* iti»a%aXi*t 9 ret rt Of gnOtP 
vpo$ tw» owocrroKm t§vn ropa£c)o/»i»a xaraXotpw o QiXwv rarr'iypa$ i, ram r*» 
into.— Ibid. 



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PHILO AND 61* TESTIMONY. ft 

This conclusion Ott the whole matter ia ao strong, that though I am 
confident a more faithful translation of the whole cannot be made by 
any man, I recommend a reference to the original, that the scholar 
may see at once that I have taken no liberty with my author ; and have 
no oecaakm to conciliate his favour, or to deprecate his criticism. I 
offer him my own translation, not on the score of its being mine, but 
on the score of its being as good as the best that could possibly be 
made, and better than any that ia not the best. 



CHAPTER IX* 

OF PHILO AND HIS TESTIMONY. 



Of Phflo, or as he is commonly called, Philo-Judaeus — Philo the Jew, 
whom Eusebius thus, largely quotes, it becomes of supreme importance 
that we should be able to ascertain the age in which he wrote, and 
who and what he was; since his treatise on "the Contemplative 
Life! 9 or Monkery, is a demonstration, than which history could not 
possibly have a stronger, that the monastic institution was in full reign 
at and before his time. 

Philo-Judaeus was- a native of Alexandria, of a priest's family, and 
brother to the Alabarch, or chief Jewish magistrate in that city. He 
was sent at the head of an embassy from the Egyptian Jews, to the 
Emperor Caius Caligula, A. d. 39, and has left an interesting recital of. 
it, usually printed in Josephus. He also wrote a defence of the Jews 
against Flaccus, then President of Egypt, yet extant He was eminently 
versed in the Platonic philosophy, of which both his style and his 
opinions partake. His works consist •chiefly of allegorical expositions 
of the Old Testament 

Eusebius places his time in the reign of Caius Claudius, the im- 
mediate successor of the Emperor Tiberius, and says of him, that he 
was a man not only superior to the most of our own religion, but by 
far the most renowned of all the followers of profane knowledge :* and 
that he was by lineal descent a Hebrew, and not inferior to any in rank 
at Alexandria ; but by following the Platonic and Pythagorean philoso- 
phy, he surpassed all the learned men of his time. 

* OtAow iyya>pi£tTD wXturrois amp tf /*ow rw nfurtpm mXK» it rm «*• *«f 
i(v9ir opiAUfJAftn vcu&u*$f vrumporaros. — Ecc. Hist. lib. 2, c. 4. 

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TO COROLLARIES. 

Eusebtus is anxious to have it believed, that Philo was* in such sense 
Vone of us'* as to have been to all intents and purposes a Christian : 
and intimates that " it was reported that Philo had met and conversed 
with St Peter, at Borne, in the reign of Claudius.* 

But alas ! Philo has been insensible, or ungrateful, for the honours 
with which he was so distinguished, and though he has so accurately 
described the discipline of a religious community, of which he was 
himself a member : 1. Having parishes ; 2. Churches ; 3. Biafrops, 
priests, and deacons ; 4. Observing the grand festivals of Christianity ; 
5. Pretending to have had apostolic founders; 6. Practising the very 
manners that distinguished the immediate apostles of Christ; 7. 
Using scriptures which they believed to be divinely inspired ; 8. And 
which Eusebius himself believed to be none other than the substance^ 
of our gospels ; 9. And the jselfsame allegorical method of interpreting 
those scriptures, which has since obtained among Christians ; 10/ And 
the selfsame manner and order of performing public worship ; 11. And 
having missionary stations or colonies of their community established 
in Rome, Corinth, Galatia* Ephesus, Philippi, Colosse, and Thessa- 
lonica ; precisely such, and in such circumstances, as those addressed 
by St. Paul, in his respective epistles to the Romans, Corinthians, Ga- 
latians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, and .Thessalonians ; and 
12. Answering to every circumstance described of the state and disci- 
pline of the first community of Christians, to the very letter ; 13. And 
all this, as nothing new in Philo's time, but of then long-established 
notoriety and venerable antiquity: Yet Philo, who wrote before Josephus, 
and gave this particular description of Egyptian monkery, when Jesus 
Christ, if such a person had ever existed, was not above ten years of 
age, and at least fifty years before the existence of any Christian 
writing whatever, has never once thrown out the remotest hint that 
he had ever heard of the existence of Christ, of Christianity, or of 
Christians. 



CHAPTER. X. 



COROLLARIES. 



1. Should it turn out, that the text of Philo, as it may have come 
down to our times, presents material discrepancies from the report which 

* Of xou Xoyoj ipfEt x*ra KXauiioy it* t«$ Pwpj u$ ojuuXiay iX3u» IIerp« to»s 
Ejtiuri Tort xtipvTToyrt, job* ax avuxos cm m THToyi.-— lib. 2, c. 15. 



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COROLLARIES. f\ 

Eusebius has here made of it; that discovery would bring no relief to 
the cogency of the demonstration resulting from Eusebius's testimony 
merely ; because it is with Eusebius alone that we are in this investiga- 
tion concerned; and, 

2. Because Christianity would be but little the gainer by overthrow- 
ing the credibility of Eusebius in this instance, at so dear an expense, 
as the necessary destruction of his credibility in all others. If we are 
not to give Eusebius credit for ability and integrity, to make a fair and 
accurate quotation, upon a matter that could have no room for mistake! 
or excuse for ignorance ; if on such a matter he would knowingly and 
wilfully deceive us ; and the variations of the text of Philo, from the 
quotations he has given us, be held a sufficient demonstration that be 
has done so : there remains no alternative, but that his testimony must 
lose its claim on our confidence, in all other cases whatever : with 
the credit of Eusebius must go, all that Eusebius's authority upheld, 
and the three first ages of Christianity will remain without an historian, 
or but as 

« A tale, 

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, 
Signifying nothing. 9 ' 



Bat the evidences of the Christian religion are not yet in this distress. 

The testimony of Eusebius on this subject, is neither more nor less 
valid, for any confirmation or impeachment it might receive, from any 
extant copies of the writings of Philo. 

3„ Because, nothing is more likely, than that the text of Philo might 
have been altered purposely to produce such an appearance of dis- 
crepancy, and so to supply to Christians (what 'tis known they would 
stop at no means to come by) a caveat and evitation of the most un- 
guarded and portentous giving-of-tongue that ever fell from so shrewd 
and able an historian ; and, 

4. Because, nothing is more certain, than that no writings have ever 
been safe from such interpolations ; the text of the New Testament 
itself, at this day, presenting us with innumerable texts, which were 
not contained in its earlier copies, and being found deficient of many 
texts which were in those copies.* 

5. We have certainly Eusebius's testimony in this chapter, and in 
such a state as that it may be depended on, as being bona fide At* 
testimony, really and fairly exhibiting to us what his view and judg- 

* See chapter 10 



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ft COROLLARIES, 

taent of Christianity was, or— (the Christian is welcome to the alter- 
native !) 

6. And Eosebius's testimony is valid to the full effect for which we 
claim it, and that is to the proof of what the origin of the Christian 
scriptures was, as it afprabbp to him. 

7. And the validity of his testimony cannot be impeached in this 
particular instance, without overthrowing the authority of evidence, 
altogether opening the door to everlasting quibbling, turning history 
into romance, and making the admission of facts depend on the caprice 
or prejudice of a party.* 

8. And if what Eusebius has delivered in this chapter, cannot be 
reconciled to what he may seem to have delivered in other parts of his 
writings, it will be for those who refuse to receive his testimony, Aere, 
to show how, or where he ever hath, -or could have, delivered a con- 
trary testimony onore explicitly, intelligibly, and positively, than he has 
this. 

9. Nor can they claim from us that we should respect his testimony 
in any other case, when they themselves refuse to respect it, where it 
stands in conflict with their own foregone conclusion. 

10. And if what he may anywhere else have said be found utterly 
irreconcileable with what he hath here delivered, so as to convict him 
of being an author who cared not what he said, the Christian again is 
welcome to the conclusion on which his own argument will drive 
him, t. e. the total destruction of all evidence that rests on the veracity 
pf Eusebius. 

11. And if Eusebius be not competent testimony to what Christianity 
was in his day, as it appeared to Aim, we hold ourselves in readiness 
to receive and respect any other testimony of the same age, which those 
who shall bring it forward, shall be able to show to be superior to that 
of Eusebius. 

12. But the conflict itself, which this most important passage has 
excited in the learned world, has thoroughly winnowed it from all the 
chaff of sophistication, and in the admissions of those who have con- 
tended most strenuously against its pregnant consequences, we possess 
the strongest species of evidence of which any historical document 
whatever is capable. 

13. The learned Basnagef has been at the pains of examining, with 

* In these Corollaries, be it observed, we respect the wide distinction between 
his testimony to miracles; in which he speaks as a divine, from whom therefore 
truth is not to be too rigidly expected ; and his testimony as an historian, from 
whom nothing but truth' is to be endured. 

f Basnage, Histoire des Juife. 1. 2. c 20, et teg. 



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COROLLARfgS, ft 

tke noil critical accuracy, the curious treatise of Philo, on which our 
Eusebfns builds his argument, that the ancient sect of the Therapeutttf, 
were really Christiana so many centuries before Christ, and were 
actually in possession of those very writings which hat* become our 
gospels and epistles. 

14. Gibbon, with that matchless power of sarcasm, whicH in so little 
said conveys so much intended, and which carries instruction and con- 
viction to the mind, by making what is said, knock at the door td ask 
admission for what is not said,* significantly tells us that " by proving 
that this treatise of Philo was composed as early as the time of 
Augustus, Basnage has demonstrated in spite of Eusebius and a crowd 
of modern Catholics, that the Therapentse were neither Christians nor 
monks. It still remains probable (adds the historian) that tbey changed 
their name, preserved theif manners, adopted some new articles' of 
faith, and gradually became the fathers of the Egyptian Ascetics/ 1 — De- 
chne and Fall of the Roman Empire, chap. 15, note. 

15. Under the overt sense of this important criticism, the sagacious 
historian protects his call on our observance of the monstrous absurdity 
of a modern theologian attempting to demonstrate what primitive 
Christianity was, in spite of the only authority from which our know- 
ledge of primitive Christianity can be derived, and challenging our 
surrender to his peculiar view of the subject, in preference to the 
conclusions of a crowd of modern Catholics, who are certainly as 
likely to know, and as able to judge, as* himself. 

16. Nor are we to overlook the palpable inference, that a demon- 
stration that litis treatise of Philo was written as early as the time of 
Augustus, so far from demonstrating the conclusion which the demon- 
strator aims to establish, demonstrated ail the premises and grounds of 
the very opposite conclusion. 

17. The apology for this dilemma, so sarcastically suggested' by 
Gibbon, that "it is probable that these Therapeutae changed their name/ 
conveys the real truth of the matter in the equally suggested probability 
that their name Was changed for them. It was not they who embraced 
Christianity, but Christianity that embraced them. 

18. We know that thos6 most admired compositions of Shakspeare 

* Could any gibe be keener than his remark on the convenience of the 
■time fixed on by divine providence, for the introduction of Christianity ; when 
the Pagan Philosophers, and the Pagans generally, were become quite in- 
different to the old forms of idolatry: -"Some deities of a more recent and 
fashionable cast, might soon have occupied the deserted temples of Jupiter 
and Apollo, if, in the decisive moment, the wisdom of providence had not 
interposed a genuine revelation." — Chap. 15. How honest must the Pagan 
priests have been, to have owned that their revelations were not genuine! 
10 K 



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U COROLLARIES. 

and Otway, the " Hamlet*' and " Venice Preserved," as now presented 
to the public, are but little like the first draughts of them, as they fell 
from the pens of those great authors ; yet no one doubts their proper 
origination, nor thinks of ascribing the merit of them to any other than 
those authors, though they may be re-edited with thousands of various 
readings, and we are now content to recognise as the best copies, the 
" Hamlet" according to Malone or Garrick, and the "Venice Pre- 
served" according to Colley Gibber. 

19. Considering the remote antiquity in which all evidence on the 
subject must necessarily be obscured, so positive and distinct an 
avowal as this, of the very highest authority that could possibly be, or 
be pretended, that the gospels and epistles of the New Testament, 
constituted the sacred writings of the ancient sect of the Therapeutae, 
before the era which modern Christians have unluckily assigned as that 
of the birth of Christ ; supported as that avowal is by internal evidence 
and demonstrations of those scriptures themselves, even in the state in 
which they have come down to us, and explaining and accounting as 
that avowal does, for all the circumstances and phenomena that have 
attended those scriptures, which no other hypothesis can explain or 
account for, without calling in the desperate madness of supposing the 
operation of supernatural causes: — we hold ourselves to have presented 
a demonstration of certainty, than which history hath nothing more 
certain — that the writings contained in the New Testament, are hereby 
clearly traced up to the Thefapeutan monks before the Augustan age; 
and that no ancient, or equally ancient work, was ever, by more satis- 
factory evidence, shown to have been the composition of the author to 
whom it has been ascribed, than that by which the writings of the New 
Testament are proved to have been the works of those monks. 

20. To be sure, they have been re-edited from time to time, and all 
convenient alterations and substitutions made upon them, " to accom- 
modate them to the faith of the orthodox. 99 * Some entire scenes of the 
drama have been rejected, and some suggested emendations of early 
critics have been adopted into the text ; the names of Pontius Pilate, 
Herod, Archelaus, Caiaphas, &o, picked out of Josephus's and other 
histories, have been substituted in the place of the original dramatis 
persona! : and since it has been found expedient to conceal the 
plagiarism, to pretend a later date, and a wholly different origination, 
texts have been introduced, directly impugning the known sentiments 
and opinions of the original authors ; by an exquisite shuffle of eccle- 
siastical management, what was really the origination of Christianity, 
has been represented as a corruption of it. The epocha and reign of 

* See Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, 



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COROLLARIES. 75 

monkish influence and monkish principles, has been wilfully misdated ; 
those who are known, and demonstrated by the clearest evidence of 
independent history, to have existed for ages before the Christian era, 
are represented to have sprung up in the second, third, or fourth 
century of that era : and in spite of the still remaining awkwardness 
and hideousness of the dilemma, that so pure and holy a religion 
should come so soon to have been so universally misunderstood : the 
monks who originated are branded as the monks who corrupted ; the 
makers for the marrers: and it has remained for Protestant illumination, 
after sixteen hundred years of dark ages, to discover evidence that 
escaped the observance of the very authorities from which it is derived, 
and to show us divine inspiration, and more than human means for the 
exaltation and improvement of the human character, in the hands of 
monks and solitaries, eremites and friars. 

21. We have here the clearest and most complete solution of the 
difficulty that seems to have so much perplexed the faith of the 
Unitarian Christian, Evanson, in his Dissonance of the four Oospets ;* 
namely — that though they are to be received as the composition of Jews, 
contemporaries, and even witnesses, of the scenes and actions they 
describe ; these compositions do nevertheless betray so great a degree 
of ignorance of the geography, statistics, and circumstances of Judea at 
the time supposed, as to put it beyond all question, that the writers 
were neither witnesses nor contemporaries — neither Jews, nor at any 
time inhabitants of Judea. This the learned Dr. Bretchsneiderf has 
demonstrated with respect to St. John in particular, most convincingly 
in his admirable work, modestly entitled Probabilia de EvangelH 

* This very ingenious and interesting work, as published by one who was a 
preacher in the Unitarian connection, and who professes himself to be a disciple 
of Jesus Christ, is another, added to the many instances we meet with, of the 
correct and even powerful acting of the mind, in most able criticism, in deep re- 
search, and shrewd discernment, while yet labouring under an insanity, with re- 
spect to some particular' modifications of thought, so egregious as to betray 
itself even to the observance of a child. Mr. Evanson rejected the gospels of 
Matthew, Mark, and John, and very many parts of St. Luke ; he rejected the 
Epistles to the Romans, to the Ephesians, to the Phillippians, to Titus, and the 
Hebrews, the two Epistles of reter, the three of John, and the Revelations ; 
each of which he convicts of evident interpolation, and strong marks of forgery; 
yet, he believed in the' resurrection of Christ, and " in all the obvious and simple, 
but important truths, of the new covenant of the gospel/' — Page 289 (the last.) 

+ Bretschneider's work has been answered, out very ridiculously, by the 
learned Professor Stein, of Brandenburgh, in a work entitled, Authentia Evan- 
gelii Johannis Vindicata, in which Stein throws himself on the unanswerable 
argument,' of having felt that gospel so particularly comfortable to his soul, as a 
proof of its genuineness. 



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?6 COROLLARIES. 

Johannis indole et orxgtne ; in which he points out men mistakes and 
errors of the geography, chronology, history, and statistics of Judea, as 
no person who had ever resided in that country, or had been by birth a 
Jew, could possibly have committed. 

22. The Therapeuta?, we see, though not Jews, nor inhabitants ©f 
Palestine, were, says Eusebius, " it is likely, descended from Hebrew*, 
and therefore were wont to observe very many of the customs of the 
ancients, after a more Jewish fashion." Now, as those custom* of the 
ancients could have been none other than Pegtm customs, their heri- 
ditary respect for every thing Jewish, accounts for their observing those 
ancient customs " after more Jewish fmhson," and for the Jewish 
complexion which the ancient Oriental or Grecian mythology would be 
jnade to wear, after passing through their hands. 

23. This account of the matter is the room confirmed, from the 
entirely incidental and undesigned character of the admission, as it 
appears in Eusebius, who lets it foil, without the least observant* of the 
argument with which it teems, and without any intention of subserving 
the uses that that argument will supply ; and still further, by the known 
character of the Jews themselves, who have introduced the stories of 
tfre Pagan heroes, disguised in a Jewish garb, into their Old Testament, 
turning Iphigenta into Jeptha's daughter, Hercules into SaaapsoB, 
fteucajion into Noah, and Arion on the dolphin's back, into Jonah in 
the wha)e's bejly, &c. &c 

?4. " The extensive commerce of Alexandria, (says Gibbon,) and 
its proximity to Palestine, gave an easy entrance to the new religion. 
It was, at first,* embraced by great numbers of the Therapeutic or 
Essenians, of the lake Mareotis, a Jewish sect which had abated much 
of its reverence for the Mosaic ceremonies. The austere life of the 
Essenians, their feasts and excommunications, the community of goods, 
their love of celibacy, their zeal for martyrdom, and the warmth, though 
not the purity of their faith, albsady offered a very lively imago oi the 
primitive discipline. It was in the school of Alexandria, that the 
Christian theology appears to have assumed a regular and scientific 
Ibrm ; and when Hadrian visited Egypt, he found a church composed 
qf Jews and Greeks, sufficiently important %o attract the notice of that 
inquisitive Fi nc P" — Qibbon f chap. 15. 

The progress of Christianity was for a lone time confined within the 
limits of this single city (of Alexandria) ; and so slow was the progress 
of thisi religion, that notwithstanding the rhetorical flourishes and hyper- 
bolical exaggerations of tfie Fathers, " we are possessed of an authentic 

.1 Yss, at first! Before the disciples were called Christians at Anttoob— 
before the name of Jesus of Nazareth had been heard of at Jerusalem. 



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COROLLARIES, ff 

jgeard, which attests the state of religion in the first and most populous 
eity of the then known world. In Rome — about the middle of the 
third century, and after a peace of thirty-eight years, the clergy con^- 
aistod but of one bishop, forty -six presbyters, four teen deacons, forty- 
two acolythes, and fifty readers, exorcists, and porters. We may 
venture (concludes the great historian,) to estimate the Christians at 
Borne at about fifty thousqnd, when the total number of inhabitants 
cannot be taken at less than a million / and of the whole Roman 
Empire, the most favourable calculation that can be deduced from the 
examples of Antioch and of Rome, will not permit us to imagine that 
mom than a twentieth part of the subjects of the Empire had enlisted 
themselves under the 1 banner of the eross before the important con* 
version of the Emperor Coastantine.V~/6t'd 

25. It should never be forgotten, that miraculously rapid as we are 
sometimes told the propagation of the gospel was, it was first preached 
in England by Austin, the monk, under commission from Pope Gro* 
gory, towards the end of the seventh century. So that the good new$ 
of salvation, in travelling from the supposed scene of action to this 
favoured country, may be calculated as having posted at the rate of 
almost an inch in a fortnight. 

26. This, however, when compared with the rate at which the 
evidence of any beneficial effect* of the religion upon the morals of its 
professors hath advanced, may be admitted to be surprising velocity ; 
for certain it is, that not the most distant hearsay of such effects had 
readied the Court of King's Bench, Westminster, so late as the 7th of 
February, 1827. 

27. Here then have we, in the cities of Egypt, and in the deserts of 
Thebais, the whole already-established system of ecclesiastical polity, 
ks hierarchy of bishops, its subordinate clfrgy, the self-same sacred 
scriptures, the self-same allegorical method of interpreting those 
scriptures, so convenient to admit of the evasion or amendment, from 
timeta time, of any defects that criticism might discover in them j the 
same doctrines, rites, ceremonies, festivals, discipline, psalms, repeated 
in alternate verses by the minister and the congregation, epistles, and 
gospels— in a word, the every thing, and every iota of Christianity, 
previously existing from time immemorial, and certainly known to 
have been in existence, and, as such, recorded and detailed by an 
historian of unquestioned veracity, living and writing at least fifty years 
before the earliest date that Christian historians have assigned to any 
Christie document whatever, 

28. Here we see through the thin veil that would hide the truth 
from our eyes, in the admission that Christians have been constrained 
to make, that the Therapeutic were certainly the first converts to the 



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7$ COROLLARIES. 

faith of Christ : and that the many circumstances of doctrine and dis- 
cipline that they had in common with the Christians, had previously 
prepared and predisposed them to receive the gospel. We find that 
the faith of Christ actually originated with them, that they were in 
previous possession, and that those who, by a chronological error, or 
wilful misrepresentation, are called the first Christians, were not the 
converters of the Therapeutee, but were themselves their converts. 

29. This accounts for a phenomenon that everywhere meets us, 
and which were otherwise utterly unaccountable ; that the religion of 
one who had expressly admonished his disciples, that his kingdom was 
not of this world, and which purports to have been first preached by 
unambitious and illiterate fishermen, should in the very first and earliest 
documents of it that can be produced, present us with all the full ripe 
arrogance of an already established hierarchy ; bishops disputing for 
their prerogatives, and throne-enseated prelates demanding and re- 
ceiving more than the honours of temporal sovereignty, from their 
cringing vassals, and denouncing worse than inflictions of temporal 
punishment against the heretics who should presume to resist their 
decrees, or dispute their authority. 

30. We find the episcopal form of government, even before the end 
of the first century, fully established ; and if not the very Galilean 
fishermen themselves, at least those who are called the apostolic fathers, 
and who are supposed to have received their authority and doctrine 
immediately from them, established in all the pride,, pomp, and magni- 
ficence of sovereign pontiffs, and lords of the lives and fortunes,* as 
well as of the faith of their flocks, and every where inculcating, as the 
first axiom of all morality and virtue, that there was no sin so great, as 
that of resistance to the authority of a bishop. 

31. " Since the time of Tertullian and Irenaeus, it has been a fact, as 
well as a maxim, Nulla ecclesia sine episcopo — no church without a 
bishop." — Gibbon. 

32. We find Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, even while the Apostles, 
or John, at least, is supposed to have been living, venturing to stake 
his soul for theirs, and himself the expiatory offering, for those who 
should duly obey their bishop : and, 

1 33. Dionysius, Bishop of Alexandria, the very seat and centre of 
Therapeutan doctrine, in his epistle to Novatius, maintains that schis* 

. * St. Peter put Ananias and Sapphira to death, for not giving him all the 
money he wanted.— Acts, v. St. f*aui ordered the Corinthian " to be delivered 
to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, for leaving overlooked the rules of the 
Therapeutan college, in a love affair." — 1 Corinth, v. The power of the church 
could never have been more fully established than when such outrageous injustice 
was above all responsibility. 



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COROLLARIES. f« 

matics, or those who should venture to follow any opinions unsanctioned 
by the bishop, were " renegadoes, apostates, matignants, parricides, 
anti-christs, blasphemers, the devil's priests, villainous, and perfidious ; 
were without hope, had no right to the promises, could not be saved* 
were no more Christians than the devil, could not go to heaven, the 
hottest part of hell their portion, their preaching poisonous, their 
baptism pestiferous, their persons accursed, &c, and much more, to 
the same heavenly-tempered purport."* 

34. Such a state of things, such sentiments and language, and the 
like thereof, invariably found as it is in the very earliest documents of 
Christianity that can be adduced, and attested by the corroboration of 
independent historical evidence, is utterly incongruous, wholly irrecon- 
cileable and out of keeping with any possibility of the existence of the 
circumstances under which the Christian revelation is generally sup* 
posed to have made its appearance on earth. 

35. Bat it is in perfect probability and in entire coincidence with all 
the circumstances discovered to us by this wonderful passage of Euse- 
bius, from whom we learn that the Evangelist, St. Mark, was believed 
to have been the first who extended his travels into Egypt, and became 
the founder of this same Therapeutan church, in the city of Alexandria, 
by preaching in the first instance to them, the gospel which has come 
down to us under his name.f 

* Quoted in the Principles of the Cyprianic Age. p. 19. A very rare and 
curious work (by J. S., that is, John Sage, a Scottish Bishop, 1695,) preserved 
in Sion College library, from whence lent to my use, by the Rev. Dr. Gaskin, 
Secretary for the Society for promoting Christian knowledge. 

f But what if Mark himself, as well as his colleagues, were really no Jews at 
all, but native Egyptians, and bishops of this pre-existent Therapeutan church ; 
the words of Eusebius may present a different sense to the eye of faith, they 
admit of no other rational understanding. 

Tstot h fjLoepKoy 7rpo>Toy ^aoi» «n m$ euyvrra <rru\oc[xivov to ivayyeXtov o $q kgu 
(ruvvy^e^obTo, xEpyf aw, exxXtxti*; ti vpunov tie ownis AXEfav^pwaj cruarwaa'Sa* 
ToTctvrn £' apa twv avro&i TrswraTK/xorow tXd&u; ay^pov ru xcu ywaixwy tK wpa>Tn* 
Mn€oXit$ ov9t<rrvi & «rxws»ff QikoovQwrarns ti xau a^o^poT«T*ij, w? xa* ypaQns 
cw/' «£t<t>0%u t*5 &aTp*C*$> xomtok crvtvitoruq rars ovpK<m& xcu vouron Ttiv aXhnt 
ra /S*e aywynv to* (fi\o»a — t. e, " But this Mark, they say ', first betook himself 
into Egypt , and preached the gospel, that which he also wrote, and first established 
the churches, of Alexandria; and such a multitude, both of men and women, were 
assembled upon his first attempt, on account of his more philosophical and severe 
asceticism, that Philo held it worthy to commit to writing an account \of their 
exercises and assemblies, their meals, and their whole discipline of life." Such 
is the whole of the 15th chapter of the second book of Eusebius's Ecclesiastical 
History, discovering to us, the now demonstrated and indisputable fact, that 
monkery, of asceticism was the first and earliest type of Christianity j that its 



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§0 CORROBORATIONS. 

86. Even the necessary decency of supposing that at least one of 
the Evangelists should have written a gospel in the language of his 
own country, has been given up, with the pitiful apology, that the in* 
vincible unbelief of the Hebrew nation, rendered the gospel which St. 
Matthew may be supposed to have written in Hebrew, not worth 
preserving. So that no gospel, in the language of the country in. 
which its stupendous events are said to have happened* can be shown 
to have been ever in existence. 

We should naturally think that any thing rather than an account 
of events that had really happened, must have been intended by 
English authors, who chose to write the history of England, in any 
other language than English. But the conduct of the Evangelists is 
still more unaccountable, in that they must have gone so much out of 
their way to deprive their countrymen of the knowledge of salvation, to 
write in a language, that 'tis certain they could never have understood 
themselves, without divine inspiration. Are we to suppose that persons 
of their mean and humble rank, in the most barbarous province of the 
Roman Empire, were better educated than persons of the same calling 
at this day in any country in Christendom, and that the fishermen of 
the Galilean lake could handle the pen of the ready writer in an age, 
ages before the age r in which, as yet, even prelates, priests, and princes, 
were marksmen, and comprehended their whole extent of literature in 
the sign of the X. 



CHAPTER XL 



CORROBORATIONS OF THE EVIDENCE ARISING FROM THE ADMISSIONS OF 
EUSEBIUS, IN THE NEW TESTAMENT ITSELF. 

In order to enable the reader to see and apply the force of these 
admissions and their corollaries, and for the innumerable necessities of 
reference throughout this Diegesis, I have presented him with the best 
account of the times and places usually assigned as those of the first 
publication of the several books of the New Testament, on the very 
highest authority that Christians themselves can affect to refer to on 
this subject, which he will find in the chapter of Tables. 

first preachers were monks ; and that not only the doctrines, but that the gospels 
which contain them, were already extant in the world, many years before the 
epochs assigned to the birth of Christ. 



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CORROBORATIONS. 8i 

1. Upon referring to this, it will be seen, that the highest authorities 
admit, that all of the epistles were written some considerable time before 
any of the four gospels ; and as a necessary consequence it follows, 
that they must have been written at a still more considerable length of 
time, before any one of those gospels could have come into general use 
and notoriety. 

2. Nor must we forget that from the very nature of epistolary 
writing, the information contained in letters, that would necessarily be 
put in the channel of conveyance to the persons to whom they were 
addressed, immediately upon being written, must as necessarily outrun 
the slow, gradual, and uncertain arrival of information conveyed in 
general treatises, which were no more one man's business than ano- 
ther, and which might remain unknown to the majority of Christians, 
even on the very site of their most extended publication. 

3. Add, too, the equally essential calculation of the effect of 
distance of places, in those remote ages, when our arts and means of 
conveyance were utterly unknown, which would necessarily render a 
published narration of events that had occurred in a distant province, 
of infinitely tardier authentication than any epistles sent by hand, as 
those of the New Testament purport to be, and only passing to and 
from the comparatively neighbouring cities of Corinth, Ephesus, and 
Thessalonica. 

4. Upon the admitted fact, that the most important of these 
epistles, (say, that to the Galatians,) was written eleven or twelve 
years before the earliest date of any one of our gospels, we may fairly 
put in challenge, that that, or any other of the epistles, must have been 
received, read, and known, even many years, before the credit of the 
gospels was established. 

5. These admissions seem to have been yielded, with however ill a 
grace, by theologians, on account of the manifestly greater difficulties 
that would attend the admission of the opposite hypothesis ; to wit, 
that, of the prior existence and prevalence of the gospels; which 
would palpably throw the language and style of these epistles in refer- 
ence to those gospels, sheer out of the latitude of all possibility of 
being received as the compositions of the contemporaries of the 
Evangelists. 

6. Nor is there more than one single passage in the whole of these 
epistles, that so much as appears to conflict with this arrangement ; 
and as that is a verbal coincidence merely, it can hardly be held 
sufficient to overthrow the universal consent supported by the manifest 
sense and character of every other chapter and verse of the epistles. 

That passage is 1 Cor. xi. 24, 25, referring to the institution of the 
sacramtent, in which the Apostle says, " / have received of the Lord 
11 i 



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8-2 CORROBORATIONS, 

that which also I delivered unto you, that the Lord Jesus, the same 
night in which he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given 
thanks, he brake it, and said, Take, eat, this is my body, which is 
broken for you: this do in remembrance of me. After the same 
manner also, he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is 
the New Testament in my blood : this do, as oft as ye drink it in 
remembrance oftne." 

This passage, indeed, has the appearance of being a direct quotation 
from the text of Luke's gospel, xxii. verses 19, 20. 

w And he took bread, and gave thanks, and brake it, and gave unto 
them, saying, This is my body, which is given for you : this do in 
remembrance of me. Likewise also the cup, after supper, saying, 
This cup is the New Testament in my blood, which is shed f or you." 

If there were no relieving alternative, but that the former of these 
passages must be acknowledged to be a quotation from the latter, as 
certainly no work could be quoted before it existed, the arrangement, 
which it will be seen by Dr. Lardner's table, makes the Epistle to have 
been written at least six years before the Gospel, is convicted of 
anachronism ; and as far as this evidence is concerned, divines are 
thrown again upon the stakes of all the difficulties that attend the 
hypothesis they have been at such pains to evade. 

1. But the evidently mystical sense of the words themselves. 

2. The distinct declaration of the apostle in this place, that he had 
received what he delivered from the Lord; 

3. And in other places (Gal. i. 11), that " the gospel which he 
preached was not after man ; for he neither received it of man, neither 
was he taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ; 99 

4. The most striking resemblance and coincidence of these words 
with the formularies and ritual of the Pagan mysteries of Eleusis ; 

5. And the admission in the preface of Luke's Gospel, that his work 
was only a compilation of previously existing documents, and derived 
in common with the works which many had taken in hand before him 
to copy from the Diegesis,* or original narration preserved in the 
sacred archives of the church t 

These are arguments entirely sufficient to relieve the dilemma, and 

* The first verse of St. Luke's Gospel, if Gospel readers could but see what 
was under their nose, would prevent their ever more pretending that the Gospels 
were original compositions. " Forasmuch as many had taken in hand to set the 
Diegesis in order," which was the original from which the Apocryphal Gospels 
were taken, and afterward, the improved versions ascribed to Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke, which obtained final approbation, and so caused not only the previous 
versions, but the Diegesis itself, from which they were all taken, to, be laid 
aside. 



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CORROBORATIONS. 83 

to leave it rather probable that Luke took his account from the same 
document which the apostle had previously quoted, or even from the 
te?t of the apostle himself. 

Thus, no exception from the general rule remains ; and we must 
admit, with all its consequences, the prior existence of these epistolary 
writings, detailing, as they do, the history of communities of Christians 
and fully established churches in Borne, Corinth, Galatia, Ephesus, 
Philippi, Colosse, and Thessalonica, rooted and grounded in the faith," 
— " beloved of God* — " called of Christ Jesus," — " in every thing 
enriched, in all utterance and all knowledge" — " coming behind in no 
good gift" and having, as the apostle, in the case of the Galatian 
church, emphatically declares, so certainly received the only true and 
authentic Gospel, that " if even the apostle himself or an angel from 
heaven, should preach any other gospel than that which they had 
received let him be accursed." Gal, i. 8, — See Syntagma of the 
Evidences, p. 75. 

6. Here we find the Gospel already so fully established, that there 
was a sense in which it could be said that it had been preached unto 
every creature under heaven (Colos. i. 23), before the date assigned to 
any one of the gospels that have come down to us, before any one of 
the disciples had suffered martyrdom, before any one of them could 
have completed his commission. Here we find a spiritual dynasty 
established, exercising the most tremendous authority ever grasped by 
man, not merely over the lives and fortunes, minds, and persons, but 
over the supposed eternal destinies of its enslaved and degraded vassals, 
and confirmed by so strong an influence over all their powers of resist- 
ance, that its haughty possessor could bear them witness that they 
were ready to pluck their eyes out and give them to him. Here 
we find churches already perfectly organised " to their power" yea 
(and the Apostle boasts), beyond their power, contributing to the pomp 
and splendour of their ministers, and beseeching them, with much 
entreaty, to take their money from them.* (2 Cor. viii. 4.) 

7, Here we find the distinct order of bishops and deacons already 
reigning in the plenitude of their distinctive authorities; and the 
bishops, forsooth, the proudest of the proud, already of such long pre- 
scription in their seat of power, as often to have abused that power, 
and to need admonitions not to be self -willed, not to be given to wine 
no strikers, and not given to filthy lucre," (Tit. i. 7.) as some of that. 

* And what goes with the story o^the Apostles, meeting with such ill success 
as to have to lay down their lives for their testimony ? It is not only not true 
but not conceivable to be true; it out-herod's Herod, and out-lies the consistency 
of romance itself. 



, 



34 REFERENCES. 

right reverend order must have been proved to be, ere such admonitions 
could have been called for ; yet called for they were, and necessary 
they had become, as the reader will see by the table, some eight or ten 
years before the date assigned to the writing of the four. Gospels. 

" The Essenians, of whom Philo has written the history, were con- 
fessedly Pythagoreans, and I think we may see some traces of these 
people among the Druids. They existed before Christianity, and lived 
in buildings called monasteria, or monasteries, and were called 
Koinobioi,* or Coenobites. They were of three kinds, some never 
married, others of them did. They are most highly spoken of by all 
the authors of antiquity who have named them." — The Celtic Druids, 
by Godfrey Higgins, Esq.\ a. n. 1827, p. 125. 

Were there any degree of difficulty in accounting for such a scheme 
of tyrannous aggrandisement, and of obtaining unbounded power and 
influence over the subjugated reason of mankind, philosophy, that 
forbids all supposition of supernatural agency, would acknowledge that 
difficulty ; but to imagine any, in accounting for the rise and progress 
of Christianity, we must, by a laborious effort of imagination, imagine 
nature to be the very reverse in every thing from what we experience 
it to be ; we must suppose a man to be at a loss to find his own head ; 
we must suppose Infinite Wisdom teaching trickery to a thief, and the 
orchestra of the spheres supplying resin for a fiddlestick — introducing 
our God not to extricate the mystery of the scene, but to sweep the 
stage and grease the pulleys. 



CHAPTER XII. 

REFERENCES TO THE MONKISH OR THERAPEUTAN DOCTRINES, TO BE TRACED 
IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

1. " Blessed are the poor in spirit, for their* s is the kingdom 
of heaven."— Mutt. v. 3. 

This, the first principle put into the month of the Galilean Thauma- 
turge, was also the first principle of the Therapeutae, and as such had 

* Kwvo&o* — living in common. Acts, iv. 32. Hyavrotf flwrarr* xowa — they 
had all things in common. 

f Mr. Higgins' testimony is the more valuable, as it is that of a witness averse 
to the conclusions to which he marshals us the way. His splendid work, in- 
structive and interesting as it is in the highest degree, though superfluously 
orthodox, has delightfully beguiled the tedium of many of my prison-hours ! 



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REFERENCES. 85 

been known and taught for ages before the time assigned to the first 
publication of the Gospel. 

It is to be found in the previously existing writings of Menander, in 
the sentence £u-yop<£oy0' o* *rswnj taw diw — We ought to consider the 
poor as especially belonging to the gods ; and in the ancient Latin 
adage, " Bonae mentis soror paupertas"— Poverty is the sister of a 
good mind. It is observable, that this Menander, the comedian, is not 
only quoted by name, by the first of the fathers (not apostolical), 
Justin Martyr, in his apology to the Emperor Adrian, as one of the 
authorities with whom the Christians held so many sentiments in 
common, but is again plagiarised into the text of 1 Cor. xv. 33 — 
$$sjpoOTiy i&n %pncr$' oiuXuu naxo u " Evil communications corrupt good 
manners." 

2. " And the disciples came and said unto him, Why speakest thou 
unto them in parables $ He answered and said unto them, Because it 
is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but 
to them it is not given," Matt. xiii. 10. " Unto you it is given to 
know the mysteries of the kingdom of Ood 9 but unto them that are 
without, all these things are done in parables; that seeing, they may 
see and not perceive, and hearing, they may hear and not understand." 
— Mark, iv. 11. 

Surely here, and in the innumerable passages to the same effect 
the principle of deceiving the vulgar is held forth in its most disgusting 
deformity. Here the double and mystical-sense system, as adopted by 
the Therapeutae, is put in full exemplification. 

" And there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom 
of heaven *s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it" — Matt xix. 12. 

Let the reader only ask himself the obvious question, what eunuchs 
could they be ? Certainly, not followers of the law of Moses, which 
held a personal defect, however involuntarily incurred, as disqualifying 
the unfortunate from ever entering into the congregation of the Lord, 
Deut. xxii. 1. Nor was a fjiture state of rewards ever propounded to 
the selfishness or ambition of the children of Israel. 

4. John the Baptist is described as a Monk residing in the wilder- 
ness, practising all the austerities of the contemplative life, neither eat- 
ing nor drinking in observance of the demands of nature ; " his food 
was locust and wild-honey :'' and not only a monk, but a father con- 
fessor, since " all the land of Judea, and they of Jerusalem, were all 
baptised of him, confessing their sins." Here, then, is certainly an 
ascetic*— in the strictest circumstances of description, a Monkish con- 
fessor — the admitted forerunner of Christ, of whom he is represented 
as saying, that " Moses and the prophets were until John the Baptist, 



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86 REFERENCES. 

bnt since then the kingdom of God* was preached." The great absur- 
dity, however, of representing the sinless Jesus as receiving baptism 
of John for the remission of his sins, would have been evaded, had the 
compilers of our Gospels stuck to the text of the Gospel according to 
the Hebrews, or that of these Hebrew-descended Therapeuts, which 
Lessing and Niemeyerr have so convincingly shown to have been the 
original from which their legends are copied, and from which it appears 
that Jesus actually refused to be baptised, saying, " What sin have I 
committed, that I should be baptised by him ?" And how could that 
horrible species of self- martyrdom, the greatest evidence of sincerity 
in the faith that could he imagined, have been practised " for the king- 
dom of heavens sake" if the kingdom of heaven had not been pro- 
pounded to the faith of these visionaries as the reward of such a sacri- 
fice, sufficiently long before, and sufficiently notoriously, to be quoted 
thus as an historical example, by the speaker in the text of Matthew? 

It is evident that Origen, the most distinguished and learned of all 
the Christian Fathers, must have read Christ's recommendation of this 
suicidal act in its very strongest sense,* or have found it in some earlier 
copies of the Gospel than have come down to us, urged in stronger 
terms, or his excellent understanding would never have fallen under the 
horrors of a belief that it was necessary to imitate the example thus 
commended, and to prepare himself for singing in heaven, by spoiling 
his voice for preaching upon earth. 

5. But Matt, xviii. 15, betrays, in the most indisputable evidence, 
the previous existence and established discipline of a Christian church, 
such as that of the Therapeutae is described to have been, from any 
length of time anterior to the Christian era. 

" Moreover, if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his 
fault between thee and him alone: if he shall hear thee, thou shah gained thy 
brother: 16 But if he will not hear thee, then take with thee one or two more, 
that in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word may be established. 17 
And if he shall neglect to hear them, tell it unto the church : but if he neglect 
to hear the church, let him be unto thee ail heathen man and a publican. 
18 Verily, I say unto you, Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth, shall be bound 
in heaven,*' §*c. §r. 

If this does not involve all that the unwary admissions of Eusebiu; 
and Epiphanius would lead us to, even the previous existence of the 
whole Christian dynasty in all its corruption, or in all its purity, 

* This phrase, the kingdom of God, and all its synonymes, was peculiarly 
characteristic of the monkish fraternity of Egypt — the dynasty of priests, as 
paramount to that of kings. 

f Quoted in Marsh's Michaelis, and hereafter in this Diegesis. 



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REFERENCES. & 

long anterior to any time wheii such language could have been used, or 
the Gospel which contained such language could have been written; 
if it betray not its design to subserve the purposes of ecclesiastical 
usurpation ; if it savour not of popery in the rankest tank that ever 
pope himself was popish; there is no skill in criticism to discover any 
truth below the surface of expression — no wrong in any wrong that 
can be put off as right — no Rome in Italy — no daylight in the sun* 
shine. 

6. " Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed 
to give than to receive.— Acts xx. 35. 

No such words as these are contained in either of our four Gospels ; 
they must, therefore, have been contained in some gospel which pre- 
viously existed, which was known and established in the esteem of the 
persons who were thus reminded of it, and which therefore ought not 
to have been rejected. 

"It is, I think," says Lardner, (vol. 1, p. 71, 4to. edit.) "a just 
observation of Dr. frideaux, that almost all that is peculiar in this sect, 
is condemned by Christ and his apostles." 

But from this admission follows, at any rate, the certainty of the 
previous notoriety of this sect, and of those tenets which were peculiar 
to it. 

And if, excepting the " almost all that was peculiar to this sect," 
which Christ and his apostles condemned, there yet remained something 
which was peculiar to this sect, which they adopted, what other con- 
clusion can follow, than that the Christian tenets were but a reform- 
ation upon the pre-existent Essenian principles, and had no claim of 
themselves to a character of originality ? We say, in like manner, at 
this day, that our protestant church condemns almost all that is peculiar 
to the church of Home, while in that condemnation itself is involved an 
admission of its prior existence, and of its common origin. There can 
be no conceivable reason why the peculiar tenets of a particular sect 
should be singled out for particular condemnation, unless the con- 
demnors stood in some more immediate relation, or knew something 
more particularly of the tenets so condemned, than of any other con- 
demnable tenets. 

The force of so particular a condemnation of almost all that was 
peculiar, involves as particular an approbation and sanction of what- 
ever it was that was not included in so particular a condemnation. 

Not to object, that, in ordinary fairness, the gauging of the Essenian 
tenets, so as to determine which, and how many of them amounted to 
almost all, should hardly be trusted to the fidelity of those who have 
the strongest interest in disparaging and under-rating those tenets. 

Again, the conjoining Christ and his Apostles as concurring in the 



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88 REFERENCES. 

condemnation of almost all that was peculiar to this sect, is assuming a 
concurrence unsupported by evidence, and inconsequential in reason. 

It by no means follows, that he and they, in every instance, must 
have approved and condemned by the same rule 5 the need they had of 
being instructed by him, is a reason, and the rebukes they frequently 
received from him, is a proof, that their judgments and his might be 
the reverse of each other. 

Nor is it a just and fair conclusion, that all the apostles of Christ 
condemned what it cannot be shown that more than one of them con- 
demned, and which all the rest may in all probability have approved. 

Nor, if it be Paul alone who hath condemned, is it just or fair to 
conclude that even one of the apostles of Christ has done so; since 
the claim of Paul to be considered as one of the apostles of Christ, rests 
on his own presumption only, and, to say the least against it, is in the 
highest degree questionable.* 

Surely, nothing could be more peculiar to any sect, than the conceit 
of making themselves " Eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake ;" 
and as surely, it is any other sort of language rather than that of con- 
demnation, in which Christ is represented as speaking of that pecu- 
liarity, Matt. xix. 12. 

What the other peculiarities of this sect were, may be collected from 
the version I have given of the text of Eusebius on the subject. 

Michaelis supplies, from the further authorities of Philo, from Jose- 
phus, Solinus, and Pliny, that their principles were generally derived 
from the Oriental or Gnostic Philosophy, of which they observed the 
moral part, while they rejected all its more absurd and egregious 
metaphysical speculations. f They abstained from blood, and would not 
even offer a sacrifice, because they regarded the slaying of beasts as 
sinful. 

Most of them abstained from marriage, and thought it an obstacle 
to the search after wisdom. 

The places in which they pursued their meditations, and which they 
held sacred, were called /xo»aKrmp*a (that is, Monasteries). w All 
ornamental dress they detested." — Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 83. 

* He is recognised only in the 2nd Epistle of Peter, chap. iii. verse 14, as a 
beloved brother, which itself is no style or designation of apostleship, even if the 
authenticity of this epistle, in which it is contained, were indisputable, which it 

not. — See Marth't Michaelis, in loco. 

t That is, " they were the Eclectic Philosophers, who rejected the evil, and 
chose the good, out of every system of religion or philosophy that had been pro- 
pounded to mankind, and who had a flourishing university already established at 
Alexandria when our Saviour was upon earth/'— Mosheim. 



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REFERENCES. 89 

7. Whose language, then, but their's, or of the followers of their sect, 
could that be ? 

" Whose adorning, let it not be t/wt outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and 
of wearing of' gold, or of putting on of apparel," &c. — 1 Pet. iii. 3. 

" Not with broidered hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array"-— I Tim. ii. 9. 

" They maintained a perfect community of goods, and an equality of 
external rank, considering vassalage as a violation of the laws of nature.'* 
— MichaelU, vol. 4, p. 83. 

What could more naturally and directly tend to render their system 
acceptable to the poor, and to spread it at any time among those who 
had neither honour nor wealth to lose ? What language could more 
nearly describe the primitive condition of the evangelical community as 
pourtrayed in Acts, iv. 32, or more entirely harmonise with those words 
ascribed to Christ? 

8. " Ye know that the princes of the Gentiles exercise dominion over them, ana 
they that are great exercise authority upon them. But it shall not be so among 
you ; but whosoever will be great among you, let him be your minister ; and who- 
soever will be chief among you, let him be your servant." — Matt. xx. 25. 

" Be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your Master, even Christ, and all ye are 
brethren. And call no man your father upon the earth, for one is your Father 
which is in heaven." — Matt, xxiii. 9. 

" They believed the soul would live for ever ; but they seem to have 
denied the resurrection of the body, which, according to their principles, 
-would only render the soul sinful, by being re-united with it. They 
attributed a natura} holiness to the Sabbath-day, because it is the 
seventh, and because the number (seven) results from adding the sides 

of a square to those of a triangle— thus : _ They spent most of their 

time in contemplation, which they called philosophical, and boasted of 
a philosophy pretended to be derived from their ancestors. And, 
notwithstanding their general profession of the contemplative life, great 
numbers of their sect were established in populous towns. " Nor is it 
one city only that they occupy," says Josephus, " but many dwelt in 
each city ; and the provider for the faction is especially discernible 
among strangers, by his engagement in storing up clothing and neces- 
sary articles :"* from which it should seem they were the old-clothe*- 
men of the world, from the remotest antiquity. " It is manifest," argues 
Michaelis,f " that the Epistle to the Ephesians, that to the Colossians, 

* Mm uk tcrriv avrm n vo\i$ u *M> '« txnarn xotwxw*, woXXot — Kti&f*w» tv 
txcurrn noku m ray^ros ifcwpn-ws rw girav omoXuxwrau, tojiuevw* ta&vm xah 
t* mriitM — Bell. Jud. lib. 2, s. 4. 

f Michaelis, in his Introduction to the New Testament, by Herbert Marsh 
now Bishop of Peterborough, vol. 4, p. 84. 

12 m 



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90 REFERENCES. 

and the 1st to Timothy, were written with a view of confuting this 
sect ; for even the very words which Philo has used in describing their 
tenets, are for the most part retained by St. Paul. 

9. " And a certain Jew, named Apollos, born at Alexandria, an eloquent man, 
and mighty in the Scriptures, came to Ephesus. This man was instructed in the 
way of the Lord, and being fervent in spirit, he spake and taught diligently the 
things of the Lord, knowing only the baptism of John ; and he began to speak 
boldly in the synagogue ; whom when Aquila and Priscilla had heard, they took 
him unto them, and expounded unto him the way of God more perfectly.'— 
Acts, xviii. 24. 

Let the reader follow the clue that is here put into his hands, in this 
historical and evidently credible part of the real adventures of these 
schismatical missionaries from the original Essenian sect Here is 
Apollos, of Pagan name ; born in the very metropolis in which the 
Essenian «ect was of highest repute ; ere any one of the apostles can 
be pretended to have preached the Gospel in that country : already 
instructed in the way of the Lord, and set up as a preacher of that way, 
in Ephesus. And our most learned critic rather maintains than con- 
ceals the incontrovertible feet, that " the earliest and principal members 
of the Christian community were attached to this sect/' — Michaelu, 
vol. 4, p. 88. 

Surely, then, it is only want of moral fortitude, and an unwillingness 
to embrace truths contrary to preconceived prejudices, that hinders 
man from seeing truths so evident, as that this Essenian or Therapeutao 
sect itself were, as Eusebius has honestly admitted them to be, 
Christians ; that Alexandria, and not Jerusalem, was the cradle of the 
infant church ; that their ancient scriptures were the first types of the 
Gospels and Epistles ; that the natural and probable parts of the Acts 
of the Apostles, are journals of the real adventures of schismatical mis- 
sionaries from this ancient fraternity of Monks, who, after leaving their 
monasteries in the deserts of Thebais, cut out to themselves a new 
path to fame and fortune, by throwing off the stricter discipline of their 
mother church, opposing its less popular doctrines, and retaining what 
they chose to retain, in such new-fangled or reformed guise, as to give 
them the advantage of laying claim either to antiquity or originality, 
as their drift of argument might require. Like the Protestant reformers 
in later ages, those who were called Christians first at Antioch, 
turned round upon their ecclesiastical superiors, heaped all manner of 
abuse and misrepresentation upon them and their tenets, and pretended 
to a purer system of doctrine, and even a higher antiquity, than the 
church from which they sprang. 

It is not impossible (though till further proof be given, it cannot be 
asserted as a feet) that the " Vagabond Jews, exorcists, who took 



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J 



REFERENCES. 91 

upon them to call over them which had evil spirits, the name of the 
Lord Jesus," (Acts xix. 13,) were likewise Essenes; for it is well 
known that the Essenes applied themselves to superstitious arts, and 
pretended to have converse with spirits. Some of them laid claim to 
the gift of prophecy, of which we find many instances in Josephus ; 
and of which we find as certainly, similar instances of the same claim, 
advanced by the first preachers and earliest members of the Christian 
community ; so that the only question on this evidence is, which party 
had the juster claim to a faculty, of which reason denies the possibility 
to either ? In a word, we have only to decide who were the greater— 
that is, the more successful impostors. 

" Among the first professors of Christianity," says Mosheim, " there 
were few men of learning— few who had capacity enough to insinuate 
into the minds of a gross and ignorant multitude, the knowledge of 
divine things. God, therefore, in his infinite wisdom, judged it neces- 
sary to raise up in many churches, extraordinary teachers, who were 
to discourse in the public assemblies, upon the various points of the 
Christian doctrine, and to treat with the people in the name of God, as 
guided by his direction, and clothed with his authority. Such were 
the prophets of the New Testament. They were invested with the 
power of censuring publicly such as had been guilty of any irregularity ; 
but to prevent the abuses which designing men might make of this 
institution, by pretending to this extraordinary character, in order to 
execute unworthy ends, there were always present in the public audi- 
tories, judges divinely appointed, who, by certain and infallible 
marks, were able to distinguish the false prophets from the true. This 
order of prophets ceased, when the want of teachers which gave rise to 
it was abundantly supplied." — Mosh. EccL Hist vol. 1, p. 102. 

The mind smarts for the degradation which the necessity of main- 
taining popular delusion could impose on so intelligent and highly- 
cultivated a scholar, in obliging him to descend to this language of 
utter idiotcy, — this reasoning that might disgrace the nursery. Here 
is infinite wisdom, to be sure, having recourse to expedients to insinuate 
its communications into the minds of the gross and ignorant multi- 
tude ; divinely raised up prophets, clothed with the authority of God 
himself; and divinely appointed judges, clothed with still higher au- 
thority, to judge whether infinite wisdom was right or wrong, but leaving 
the gross and ignorant multitude as much in need as ever of some 
other, divinely appointed, still higher judges, to judge whether the other 
judges judged fairly ; as 'tis certain that the gross and ignorant 
multitude, for whose benefit the divine insinuations were intended, 
were held to be no judges at all, and God or Devil was all as one to 
them. How must a man have looked when he reasoned thus ? But 



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93 REFERENCES. 

the absurdity of this reasoning is not worse than an attempt to give 
respectability to the authority which makes it the best account that can 
be given of the matter. 

10. " How is it" asks the Apostle himself, that " every one of you 
hath a psalm, hath a doctrine, hath a tongue, hath a revelation ? 
If there come in those that are unlearned, or unbelievers, will they 
not say that ye are mad?* — 1 Cor. xiv. 23. 

Could language convey clearer evidence, that in the worst and 
grossest sense of what Philo or Josephus have represented the Essenian 
churches to have been, that in reality the first assemblies of these 
primitive Christians were. And this is a state of things described as 
obtaining, several years before the writing of any one of our four 
Gospels. 

If there were really any features of distinctive and different origina- 
tion between these long anterior Therapeutan societies, and those who, 
iu an after-age, acquired the name of Christian churches, all traces of 
that distinctiveness are lost. To all scope of history, and possibility 
of understanding, they must be pronounced and considered to be, one 
and the same class and order of religious fanatics. 

As for the pretence to anything supernatural, philosophy teaches 
us to view it only as a certain and incontestible mark of imposture, by 
whomsoever advanced. Prophecy ! the very name of such a thing is 
a surrender of all pretence to evidence ; 'tis the language of insanity ! 
The fetor of the charnel-house is not more charged with its admonition 
to our bodily health, to withdraw from the proximities of* death, than 
the cracky sound of the thing is, with warning to our reason, that we 
are out of the regions of sobriety, wherever it is so much as seriously 
spoken of: no honest man ever pretended to it. 

1 1. Matthew (xviii. 18) relates a story of Jesus rebuking a devil who 
kept his hold so obstinately on the body of a boy, that his disciples, 
with all the miraculous powers with which he had previously gifted 
them, were unable to cast him out ; which Jesus is represented as ac- 
counting for by saying, "Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by 

fasting and prayer." — Matt, xviii. 21. 

" Now we know," says Michaelis, " that the Jews ascribed almost 
all diseases to the influence of evil spirits. To cure a disease, therefore, 
was, according to their notions, to expel an evil spirit: this they 
pretended to effect by charms and herbs : and we have seen from Euse- 
bius, what extraordinary efficacy and virtue the Therapeutans ascribed 
to prayer and fasting." 

12. The whole doctrine of election, which distinguishes the episto- 
lary writings of St. Paul, is but an application to the persons whom he 
addresses, of the notions which the Jews from previous ages had main- 



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REFERENCES. 99 

tained, whose hopes of acceptance with God were founded on the merits 
of their ancestry. We have Abraham to our father ', is represented 
as the reason they offered, why they had no need to bring forth fruits 
meet for repentance. One of their principal maxims was, ^^TT D^Tjft 
pbn Urb EP b$nW ^O— that is, U AU Israel have the portion of 
eternal life allotted to them." 

Another of the Jewish doctrines is, " God promised to Abraham, that 
if his children were wicked, he would consider them as righteous, on 
account of the sweet odour of his circumcised foreskin."* 

The holding out a similar inducement to the selfishness and cruelty 
or* the Gentile nations, with reservation of Jewish prerogative, consti- 
tuted all the difference of the reformed Esseneism, after it took the 
name of Christianity. 

13. The allegorical method of expounding their scriptures, so 
characteristic of the Therapeutan monks, we find entirely adopted and 
avowed by Paul, in his Epistle to the Galatians, chap. 4, in which, of 
the most simple and obvious apparent facts of the Old Testament, he 
asserts, " which things are an allegory*' The two sons of Abraham 
are to be understood as two covenants ; his kept-mistress is a mountain 
in Arabia; and, again, the mountain in Arabia is the city of Jeru- 
salem. 

14. Again, in 2 Cor. iii. 0, the allegorical method, so entirely Esse- 
nian, is spoken of as the chief design and intention of the Gospel 
ministry, and that, too, even with respect to the sense of writings which 
constituted what was known and recognised as the New Testament, 
when this epistle was written, of which, therefore, the four Gospels 
which have come down to us, could have constituted no part ; as it will 
be seen by the table, that they were not written till six or seven years 
after this epistle* 

"God also hath made us able ministers of the Nero Testament, 
not of the letter ', but of the spirit, for the letter kUleth," &c. : which 
principle the Christian Fathers carried to such an extent, that they 
hesitated not to admit that the Gospels themselves were not defensible 
as truth according to their literal text. " There are things contained 
therein," says Origen,f " which, taken in their literal sense, are mere 
falsities and lies. And of the whole divine letter, St Gregory} asserts, 
that, "it is not only dead, but deadly." And Atbanasius§ admonishes 
us, that, " should we understand sacred writ according to the letter, 
we should fall into the most enormous blasphemies." 

* Pugio Fidei, v. 3, dis. 3, cap. 16, quoted in Michaelis, vol. 4, p. 95. 
f Horn. 6, in Isaiah, jbl. 106, D. 



r -i — yv , 

\ Comment, on 2 Kings, c. 7. 

§ Questiones ad Antiochum, torn. 2 p. 357, D. 



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15. Many objectionable tenets of the Essenian sect are reproved 
and opposed in passages of Paul's epistles, too numerous to be quoted ; 
but all in the manner and style of one who had been particularly ac- 
quainted with those tenets, and who admitted and recognised their 
affinity and relation to the Christian doctrines, as much nearer than 
any of the errors or absurdities of the other forms of heathenism. 

16. Throughout all these epistles, we find the Gospel spoken by all 
the varieties of designation that could be applied to it, as already 
preached, as read in all the churches, as the rule of faith, the test of 
orthodoxy — as being then of high antiquity — containing all the received 
doctrines with respect to the life and adventures of Jesus Christ, all 
that was necessary to make a man wise unto salvation through faith in 
Christ Jesus : how he died for our sins, according to the scriptures ,* 
and that he was buried ; and that he rose again the third day, accord- 
ing to the Scriptures, 1 Cor. xv. 4. 

17. Upon the strength and faith of these doctrines, we find churches 
already established, and the distinct orders of bishops, elders or priests, 
and deacons, as described by Philo, already of so long standing, and of 
such high honour and emolument, that it could have become a common 
adage, that "if a man desire the office of a bishop, he desireth a good 
work ;" many of the community having held that office in such a way 
as to render it necessary, in the election of future bishops, that care 
should be had to appoint such as should be " not given to wine, no 
strikers, not greedy of filthy lucre," &c. — 1 Tim. iii. 3. 

And this was the state of things, in actual existence, before the writ- 
ing of any one of the four gospels. 

18. " In my father's house are many mansions; I go to prepare a 
place for you." John xiv. 2. A fair translation of the passage would 
render it, " In my father's house are many monasteries." — E> th «ju» 

TW ff«TpOJ fAW, fAQVCU TTOKKOU M0W* 

The translation here egregiously protestantizes. Monastery is the 
correct rendering of the word pou*, and of all possible derivatives and 
combinations of it ; the leading or radical idea is, a solitary abode, 
where each individual is excluded, or excludes himself, from intercourse 
with others. 

To those who consider Monachism, or Monkery, as a corruption of 
Christianity, sprung up in some later age, this and such like texts must 
bear the appearance of interpolations, or modernisms, tending to betray 
a later date than that challenged for these writings. But, taking 
nature for our guide, we must necessarily conclude, that an imperfect 
and defective system was infinitely more likely to improve by time, and 
gradually to throw off its original imperfections and defects, than a system 
that started from a state of excellence and perfection at first, to become 
in a few ages entirely deteriorated and corrupted. 



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REFERENCES. 95 

The positive evidence, then, of Philo, to the prior existence of 
Monkery, has that challenge on our conviction, which must ever attend 
the highest species of testimony, when borne to the highest degree of 
probability. 

19. In the first verse of the Epistle to the Philippians, there is a 
distinction made between the general congregation of the Saints or 
Christians, and the Bishops and Deacons, which, by the learned Evan- 
son, is adduced as an instance savouring very strongly of a much later 
age than that of the Apostles.— Dissonance, p. 264. 

The antipapistical antipathies of this Unitarian divine, allowed him 
only to see matter of offence in the term Saints, an order of men, as he 
supposes, first constituted by the superstitious piety of the Roman 
Catholic Church : but surely a moment's ingenuous speculation on the 
probabilities of circumstances, would discover matter of equal incongruity 
in the idea of the existence of the distinct orders of bishops and deacons, 
in a flourishing national church, when this epistle was written ten or 
twelve years before the date of any one of our four gospels, and within 
the lifetime of one who was the contemporary of Christ, and the com- 
panion of his immediate disciples. 

That church, and all others that could have in them the distinct 
orders of bishops and deacons, must have been ancient at the time. 
There could be no bishops and deacons among new converts. Such a 
state of the church at that time involves a certain demonstration, that 
its doctrine, discipline and government, must have been of many years 
standing, anterior to the Augustan age. 

20. It is a violence to imagination, and costs it a sort of painful 
effort, to suppose that St. Paul could have written his epistle to the 
Romans in the Greek language. We could as easily fancy a general 
address to the inhabitants of London, in Arabic. 

21. In the earliest Greco-Latin Codices, the passage Romans xii. 13, 
" Distributing to the necessity of saints" — Teus xpEuw; run ovyiw KMiovovrns— 
stood " communicating to the memories of the saints," i. e. — Twj i*viuk 
run myiw x. <r. \. — Of this passage, Michaelis remarks, that it conveys 
the language and sentiments of a later age ; aytos being used in the 
ecclesiastical sense of the word, for saints or martyrs, characters un- 
known at Rome, when St Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans ; and 
this fault, for a fault he conceives it evidently is, could hardly have 
taken place before the end of the second, or the begining of the third 
century. 

Mosheim describes the festivals and commemorations of the martyrs, 
being celebrated in the most extravagant manner, as characteristic of 
the fourth century : and all Protestant ecclesiastics strain every nerve 
to throw the odium of what they esteem corruptions of the primitive 
purity on later ages. 



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96 REFERENCES. 

" It is well known, among other things, what opportunities of sinning 
were offered to the licentious, by what were called the vigils of Easter 
and Whitsuntide, or Pentecost." Mosheim — vol. i. p. 398. We find, 
however, that this religious observation of the vigils of the great 
festivals, especially that of Easter, in commemoration of Christ's resur- 
rection, was observed in a distinguished manner among the Therapeutic 
or Essenians, and as it was an annual observance, must have obtained 
many years before the birth of Christ — See the translated chapter from 
Eusebius, verse 41. 

22. " Moreover, brethren, I delivered unto you first of all, that which I also 
received, how that Christ died for our sins, according to the scriptures ; and that 
he was buried, and that he rose again the third day, according to the scriptures; 
and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve : after that, he was seen of 
about Jive hundred brethren at once, of whom the greater part remain unto this 
present, but some are fallen asleep: after that, he was seen of James, then of all 
the apostles ; and last of all he was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time." 
1 Corinth, xv. 

The writer of this epistle here refers to higher authority than his 
own, " that, which he also received," that is, scriptures, which related 
that Christ died for our sins ; that he appeared after his resurrection to 
five hundred brethren at once, and in an especial manner, to Cephas,* 
and in a like especial manner, to James. 

1 These circumstances partake largely of the more marvellous and 
exaggerative charac ter of the apocryphal gospels. 2. * They are certainly 
not contained in the canonical ones. 3. And yet are insisted on, as so 
essential to the Christian faith, that unless they were kept in memory, 
Christians would have believed in vain. 4. No laws of evidence would 
endure the unsupported assumption that the witness, Cephas, was the 
same person as the apostle, Peter. 5. Nor were there twelve disciples, 
after Judas, who was one of the number, had hanged himself. 6. Nor 
is there the least intimation, in any of our gospels, of an especial ap- 
pearance to James. 7. Nor was the number of the brethren, at their 
first meeting, after Christ's ascension from the top of Mount Olivet, 
more than " about an hundred and twenty ."t 8. Nor was there time. 
9. Nor was it possible that the Scriptures, which detailed the circum- 
stances of Christ's appearance after his resurection, in this exaggerative 
style, could have been in any way derived from our four gospels, or any 
of them: they not having been written till twelve years after this 
epistle.t 

* Acts i. 15, This Cephas was one of the 76, a wholly different personage 
from the Peter of the Gospels ; to this assurance, we have the positive assertion 
of Eusebius. 
* f See the Table of the Times and Places of writing, &c. 



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RRFEftBNCBS, 97 

That, other scriptures than those which have come down to us, telling 
the Christian story hi a different way, were the original basis of the 
Christian faith ; and that those other scriptures were in Vogue and 
notoriety, not only before our gospels wens written, but before the 
events related in onr gospels occurred, are facts, whose force of evidence 
amounts to the utmost degree of certainty of which historical fact is 
capable. That those scriptures were the sacred writings of the Egyptian 
Therapeuts described by Philo, and so expressly considered by Euse* 
bins, is matter of the strongest presumption that can be supposed in 
the absence of all other grounds of presumption. 

23. " Else what shall they do, which are baptised for the dead, if the dead rise 
not at all 1 Why are they then baptized for the dead ?"—l Cor. xv. 29. 

Here is a reference to some, then well known and established religious 
ceremony, existing in a Christian church ; of which ceremony, and its 
significancy and purport, no trace or vestige has come down to us : nor 
can our commentators come to any sort of agreement, as to what sense 
should be attached to the words. It is utterly impossible, that such a 
baptism could have come into use, or have acquired such a notoriety, 
as to make it stand for so general an argument, as that of the resurrec- 
tion of the dead, within the term of life of any one who had conversed 
with St. Peter, on whom it hath been pretended, that the Christian 
church is founded. Let the reader, if he can, conceive any other way 
of accounting for the text, than its reference to some ancient ceremony 
of the Egyptian Therapeuts, which, after the schismatics and seceders 
from their communion, had acquired the name of Christians, grew 
gradually into disuse, and so finally sunk in oblivion. 

24. Acts xx. i8. St. Paul addresses the elders of the Ephesian church, 
" 1 have been with you at all seasons. Ye all, among whom 1 have gone preaching 
the kingdom of God. 19 a style of the most affectionate intimacy. 

Yet the writer of the Epistle te the Ephesians addresses them as a 
stranger, who had only " heard of their faith in the Lord Jesus, and 
love unto all the saints." (Eph. i. 15.)— Queby,— Could the Paul, 
who declared in the one case, and the Paul who wrote in the other, be 
the same individual ? Query.*- Who were aU the saints, who were 
loved by the Ephesians, at least twelve years before any one of our 
gospels was written ? and consequently as many years before there 
could be any saints whatever, whose faith had been founded on those 
gospels ? 

25. " Little children, it is the last time : and as ye home heard that Antichrist 
shall come, even now are there many antichrists { whereby we know that it is the 
last time."~l John ii. 18. 

* They Joined themselves to Baal-Peor, and ate the offerings of the dead.— 
Fsalms. The reader is to make what use he pleases of this conjecture. 

13 * 



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*» BJRFRKENCBS/ 

Hen is a fall confession of the comparatively modern character of 
this epistle:— 1. The time which eoakl be spoken of as U *A* last," 
with relation to Christianity, could not but at least have been Me 9 and 
late enough to have given the persons so addressed time to have heard 
of the prophecy that Antichrist should come : and, 2. To have had 
faith in it, and expectation of its accomplishment, beforehand; 3. And 
if the time when this epistle was written (about a. d. 80) was the last 
of Christianity, there can have been no Christianity in the world since 
theiu 4, And if then, while St. John was living, Antichrist was come, 
and It was the last time, the Christ whom St. John intended to preach, 
must have been much earlier in the world than that time. All which 
agrees in style and manner with the character of an angry Egyptian 
monk, complaining of the corruptions and perversions which his con- 
temporaries had put upon the pure and original Therapeautan doctrines ; 
but present^ not a single feature in keeping with the character of onej 
supposed to be himself one of the earliest preachers of an entirely new 
religion, who existed not in the last time, but in the first ; not after 
Christianity had run to seed, but before it had fully sprung up. ** And 
if Christianity," says Archbishop Wake, u remained not uncorrapted 
so long, surely we may say, it came up and was cut down like a flower, 
and continued not even so long as the usual term of the life of man." 

26. " 1 wrote unto the church ; but Diotrephes, who loveth to have the pre- 
eminence among them, receiveth us not* Wherefore, if I come, I will remember 
his deeds which he doeth y prating against u$ with matieiou* w$rds ; and not content 
therewith, neither doth he himself receive the friars, and forbiddeth them that 
would, and casteth them out of the church" — 3 John, 9, 10. 

1. If this John were the disciple of Christ, this text is fatal to the 
claims of St. John's Gospel, since it shows that the rulers of the church 
had rejected his writings. 2. Its reference to the circumstance of 
mendicant friars, or travelling quack-doctors, is as clear as the day. 

3. But who was this Diotrephes, whose name signifies literally the 
ward or pupil of Jupiter? Any thing rather than a Christian name. 

4. And with what conceivable state of a Christian community, that 
coxdd have existed during the lifetime of one of its first preachers, can 
we associate the idea of such a struggle for pre-eminence ? The phe- 
nomena admit of no solution but that whieh determines thaf these 
writings are the compositions of no such persons as is supposed, and 
that, however ancient we take them to be, they refer to a state of 
ecclesiastical polity still mare ancient. 

27. " Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit yourselves, for they 
watch for your souls, as they that must give an account "—Heb. xiii. 17. 

28. " Remember them that have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you 
the word of G<*//"— Heb. xiii. 7. 

What have we here, but references to ecclesiastical government and 



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HBFTJU5H0ES. 99 

spiritual power, already established in all its plenitude? A state of 
things which could not possibly have existed — a sort of language that 
could not possibly have been used, in any reference to an authority 
which had originated within the lifetime of the persons so addressed, 
or to a word of God, of which the then preachers were the first. 

29. " For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves 
into the apostles of Christ; and no marvel, for Satan himself is transformed into 
an angel (flight."— 2 Cor. xi, 13. 

Aye ! aye ! And with what state of a religion, whose founder had 
been crucified, and whose doctrines had not yet passed into the hands 
of a second generation, and whose apostles had nothing but spiritual 
blessings to confer on others, and nothing but martyrdom to expect fur 
themselves, can we imagine that apostleship to be so winning a game, 
that the Devil himself would play it ?* 

THE CONCLUSION 

Is inevitable. We are not, perhaps, entitled certainly to pronounce 
that it was so ; but the hypothesis (if it be no more), that Paul and 
his party were Sent oat, in the first instance, as apostles, or missionaries, 
from this previously existing society of Monks, which had for ages, 
or any length of time before, fabricated and been in possession of the 
allegorical fiction of Jesus Christ ; that the Act* of the Apostles, with 
the exception of all their supernatural details, are a garbled journal of 
his real adventures ; and the Epistles, with the exception of some im- 
proved passages and superior sentiments that have been foisted into 
them, are such as he wrote to the various communities in which he had 
established his own independent supremacy, by a successful schism from 
the mother church : this hypothesis will solve all the phenomena ; which 
is what no other will. - 



*■ There are innumerable other passages to the like effect ; such as the wild 
man John preaching in the wilderness : A voice crying in the wilderness : the 
miraculous fasting of the otd woman Anna : the password of the vigilant monks, 
Watch and pray I &c. ficc., whose farther tractation would detain me too long 
from worthier matter. Let the reader glance his eye over the New Testament 
w*tn this observance. 



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MO PRBMMINABV. 

CHAPTER XIII. 



OX THE CLAIMS OF THE SCRIPTURES OF THE NEW TESTAMENT TO 
RE CONSIDERED AS GENUINE AND AUTHENTIC. 



PRELIMINARY. 

There is no greater nor grosser delusion, perhaps, in the world, than 
that of the common sophistry of arguing for the genuineness and au- 
thenticity of the writings of the New Testament, upon the ridiculous 
supposition, that the state of things of which we are witnesses, with 
respect to these writings in our times, is the same, or much like what 
it was, in the primitive ages ; that is, that these writings were generally 
in the hands of professing Christians, were distinguished as pre- 
eminently sacred, had their authority universally acknowledged, or 
were so extensively diffused, that material alterations in them from time 
to time, could not have been effected without certain discovery, and 
as certain reprobation of so sacrilegious an attempt* 

The very reverse of such an imaginary resemblance of past to present 
circumstances, is the truth of history, as borne out by the admissions of 
all who have devoted their time and labours to the investigation of 
ecclesiastical antiquity. 

The learned Dr. Lardner is constrained to admit, that " even so late 
as the middle of the sixth century, the canon of the New Testament 
had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally 
acknowledged ; but Christian people were at liberty to judge for them- 
selves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as 
apostolical, and to determine according to evidence." — Vol. 3. pp. 54-61. 

We have shown, also, that the scriptures were not entrusted to the 
hands of the laity. The mystical sense which we find by the very 
earliest Fathers to have been attached to them, is the strongest cor- 
roboration of those positive testimonies which we have, that the 
Christian people were kept in the profoundest ignorance of the contents 
of the sacred volume. The clergy only were held to be the fit deposi- 
taries of those mystical legends, which in the hands of the common 
people were so liable to be " wrested to their own destruction." Not 
to insist on the deplorable ignorance of lay-people all over Christen- 
dom for so many ages, during which scarce any "but the clergy were 
able to read at all. 



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PAEUMINARY, i W 

It would be hard to authenticate a single instance of the existence 
of a translation of the gospels into the vulgar tongue, of any country 
in which Christianity was established, at any time within the first four 
centuries. 

The clergy, or those engaged and interested in the business of 
dealing out spiritual edification, whose testimony alone we have on the 
subject, mutually criminate and recriminate each other, according as 
they grasp or lose their hold on the ascendancy (and so are held to be 
orthodox or heretical), with corrupting the scriptures. 

The epistolary parts of the New Testament, entirely independent I 
and wholly irrelevant of the gospels as they manifestly are, may be 
considered as the fairest and most liberal specimen of the manner f 
in which the stewards of the mysteries of God, " brought forth things [ 
new and old,"* according to the spiritual necessities of the congrega- 
tions which they addressed, while they steadily^kept the key of the 
sacred treasure, the right of expounding it, and even of determining 
what it was, exclusively in their own hands. Hence, though the gospel 
is spoken of in innumerable passages of these epistles, (written, as we 
have seen they were, before any gospels which have come down to us, 
except those which are deemed apocryphal,) there occurs not in them * 
a single quotation or text seeming to be taken from the gospel so ; 
spoken of, or sufficient to show what the contents of that gospel were. ; 

Hence the authenticity and genuiness of the writings of St. Paul, 
and of all those parts of the narrative of the Acts of the Apostles, which 
Paley in his Horce Paulinm has shown, present such striking coinci- 
dences with bis writings, is a wholly distinct and irrelevant question, 
to that of the genuineness and authenticity of the writings on which the 
Christian faith is founded : for, as all persons must see and admit at 
once, that if the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which 
have come down to us, could be shown to be the compositions of such 
persons, as those to whom, under those names, they are ascribed, and 
so to be fairly and honourably genuine and authentic — this, their high 
and independent sanction, would lose nothing, nor even so much as be 
brought into suspicion, by a detection of the most manifest forgery and 
imposture of those subordinate, or, at most, only supplementary writ- 
ings ; so the genuineness of these supplementary writings involves no 
presumption of the genuineness or authenticity of those ; but rather, as 
being admitted to have been, written earlier than our gospels, and re- 
ferring continually to gospels still earlier than themselves* which had 

* Every Scribe instructed unto the kingdom of heaven, is like unto a man that 
is an householder* which bringeta forth out of bis treasure, things ne^and old.— 
Matt. xiii. 52.— i. e. he practises the art of deceiving the people. 



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10* CANONS OP CRITICISM. 

previously been the role of faith to so many previously existing churches ; 
these epistles supply one of the most formidable array* of proof that 
can possibly be imagined against the claims of dUr gospels ; rind having 
served this effect, like expended ammunition that has carried the volley 
to its aim, they dissipate and break off into the void and incollectible 
inane. The gospels once convicted of being merely suppositions and 
furtive compositions, it is not the genuineness and demonstrable authen- 
ticity of any other parts of the Netr 1 Testament, that its advocates will 
care to defend, or its enemies to impugn. They fall as a matter of 
course, like the provincial towns and fortresses of a conquered empire, 
to the masters of the capital. 

In this Diegesis, we shall therefore more especially confine our in- 
vestigation to the claims of the Evangelical histories ; and as our 
arguments must mainly be derived from the admissions which their 
best learned and ablest advocates have made with respect to them, we 
shall, throughout, speak of them, and of theif contents, In the tone and 
language which courtesy and respect to the feelings of those for whose 
instruction we write may reasonably claim from us ; and which being 
understood as adopted for the convenience of argument only, can involve 
too compromise of sincerity; 



^»VWr w >» IAW » 



CHAPTER XIV. 

canons of criticism. — date op criticism. — corollaries.-— dr. 
lardner's table. 



CANONS <QF CRITICISM. 



To be applied in judging the comparative claims of the Apocryphal and Canonical 

Gospels. 

1. The canonical and apocryphal gospels are competitive ; i. e. they 
are reciprocally destructive of each otheVs pretensions. 

2. If the canonical gospels are authentic, the apocryphal gospels are 



3. If the apocryphal gospels are authentic, the canonical gospels are 
forgeries. 



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4. No cooBidarafaqn ot the comparative merits or character* of the 
competitive works, can have place in the consideration of their' claims 
to authenticity,. 

5. -Those, writings, which ever they tje, or whether they be the better 
or the worse, which can be shown to have been written Jir*t 9 have the 
superior claim to authenticity. - 

6. It is impossible* that those writings which' were the first, could 
have been written to disparage or supersede those which were written 
after. • • 't. .. ./ 

7. Those writings which have the less appearance of art and con- 
trivance, are the first* 

S. Those writings which exhibit a more rhetorical construction of 
language, in the detail of the same events, with explications, suppres- 
sions, and variations, whose evident- scope is to render the story more 
probable, are the later writings. 

9. Those writings whose existence is acknowledged by the others, 
but which themselves acknowledge not those others* are unquestionably 
the first, ,«/.».. 

10. There could be nq conceivable object or purpose in putting forth 
writings- which were much wprse, after the world were in possession of 
sueb as. were much better* 

11. IP the story were not true, in the first way of telling it, no im- 
provement in the way .of telling it could render it {rue* 

12. If those, who were, only improvers upon, the original history, 
have concealed that fact, and have suffered mankind to understand that 
the improvements were the original*, they were guilty and wicked 
forgers, and never could have had any other or better intention than to 
mislead and deceive mankind. 



DATS OF CBI , TICI8M. 

To be applied in judging the comparative claims of the Apocryphal and Canonical 

Gospel*. 

1. It is manifest, and admitted on all hands, that the apocryphal 
gospels are very silly and artless compositions, " full of pious frauds 
and fabulous wonders."— Mosheim, in loco. 

2. It is manifest, and admitted on all hands, that the canonical gospels, 
exhibit a more rhetorical construction of language than the apocryphal, 
and have a highly-wrought sublimity and grandeur, the like of which is 
no where to be found in any of the apocryphal gospels. 

3. The canonical gospels, but more especially the canonical epistles, 
which are admitted to have been written before the gospel?, do in very 



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104 Dk. LARfeNBft'8 TABLE. 

many places acknowledge the existence and prevalence of those writings 
which are now called apocryphal. 

4. The apocryphal gospels, as far as we have any traces of them left, 
do no where recognise or acknowledge the writings which are now 
called canonical. 

5. The apocryphal gospels are quoted by the very earliest Fathers, 
orthodox as well as heretical, as reverentially as those whieh *te now 
call canonical 

6. The apocryphal gospels are admitted in the New Testament itself 
to have been universally received, and to have been Hie guide and rule 
of faith to the whole Christian world, before any - one of our present 
canonical gospels was in existence. 



ConoUtAiuqa. 

1. Indications of time, discovered in those gospels which were written 
first, will indicate time relatively to those which were written after- 
wards — exempli gratia. It being proved that die legend Awes written 
before the legend C, there will be proof, that events whieh were con- 
temporary or. antecedent to the writing of A, were antecedent, a fortiori, 
to the writing of C. 

2. Indications of the prevalence of a state of things, existing when 
the earlier gospels were written, will indicate relatively the state of 
things, when the latter gospels were written — exempli gratia. It being 
proved that the earlier gospels were written under an universal pre- 
valence of the notions and doctrines of monkery, there will be proof of 
the monkish character necessarily derived to the gospels, derived from 
those gospels. 



DB. LABDNEB'S TABLE. 

x/r. Lardners Plan of the Times and Places of writing the Four Gospels and 
the Acts of the Apostles. 

(Supplement to The Credibility, &c. vol. i. p. iv.) 



Gospels, 


Places* 


A.D. 


St. Matthew's. 


Judea, or near it. 


About 64 


St. Mark's. 


Rome. 


64 


St. Luke's. 


Greece. 


63 or 64 


St. Johns. 


Ephesus. 


68 


Hie Acts of the Apostles. 


Greece. 


63 or 64 



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OP THE POUR GOSPELS IN GENERAL. 



105 



A Table of St. PmF* Epistletmthe QrdrrefTime; with the Places where, ana 
. $he 'Ifrne* when, they were written. 

(From Lardner's Supplement to The Credibility, &c. yoI. ii. p. W.) 



Epistles. 

1 Thessalonians. . 

2 Thessalonians. 

Galatians. 

1 Corinthians* 

1 Timothy. 
Titus. 

2 Corinthians. 
Romans, 
Ephesians. 

2 Timothy. 
Philippians. 
Colossians. 
Philemon. 
Hebrews. 



Places. 
Corinth. 
Corinth. 

Corinth or Ephesus. 

Ephesus. 

Macedonia. 

Macedonia, or near it. 

Macedonia. 

Corinth. 

Rome. 

Rome. 

Rome. 

Rome. 

Rome. 

Rome or Italy. 



D. 

52 
52 

{Near the end of 52 
or the beginning of 53 
The beginning of 56 
50 
Before the end of 56 
About October 57 
About February 58 
About April 61 
About. May 61 
Before the end of 62 
Before the end of 62 
Before the end of 62 
In the spring of 63 



A Table of the Seven Catholic Epistles, and the Jlevehition; 
where, and the Times when, they were written. 



with the Places 



(From Lardner's Supplement to The Credibility, &c. vol. iii. p. iv.) 



Epistles, 4rc. 
The Epistles of St. James. 
The two Epistles of St. Peter. 
St. John's first Epistle. 
His second and third Epistles. 
The Epistle of St. Jude. 
The Revelation of St. John. 



Places. A. D. 

Judea. 61, or the beginning of 62 

Rome. ' 64 

Ephesus. About 80 

Kphesus. Between 89 and 90 

Unknown. 64 or 65 



Patmos or Ephesus. 



95 or 



CHAPTER XV. 



OF THE FOUB GOSPELS, IN GEKEBAL. 

The ordinary notion, that the four gospels were written by the persons 
whose names they bear, and that they have descended to us from ori- 
ginal autography of Matthew and John, immediate disciples, and of 
Hark and Luke, contemporaries and companions of Christ; in like 
manner as the writings of still wore early poets and historians have 
14 o 



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106 OK TAB FOOR GOSPELS IN GBNBfUfc. 



descended to us, from the pens of the authors to whom they are attri- 
buted, is altogether untenable. It has been entirely surrendered by the 
most able and ingenuous Christian writers, and will no longer be main- 
tained by any but those whose zeal outruns their knowledge, and whose 
recklessness and temerity of assertion, can serve only to dishonour and 
betray the cause they so injudiciously seek to defend. 

The surrender of a position which the world has for ages been led to 
consider impregnable, by the admission of all that the early objection of 
the learned Christian Bishop, Faustus, the Manichean, implied, when he 
pressed Augustine with that bold challenge which Augustine was un- 
able to answer, that,* " It is certain that the New Testament waa not 
written by Christ himself, nor by his apostles, but a long while after 
them, by some unknown persons, who lest they should not be credited 
when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to 
their works the names of apostles, or of such as were supposed to have 
been their companions, asserting that what they had written them- 
selves, was written according to those persons to whom they as- 
cribed- it." 

This admission has not been held to be fatal to the claims of divine 
relation, nor was it held to be so even by the learned Father himself 
who so strenuously insisted on it, since he declares his own unshaken 
faith in Christ's mystical crucifixion, notwithstanding. 

Adroitly handled as the passage has been by the ingenuity of theolo- 
gians, it has been made rather to subserve the cause of the evidences of the 
Christian religion, than to injure it. Since though it be admitted, that 
the Christian world has "all along been under a dehmbn" in this respect, 
and has held these writings to be of higher authority than they really 
are ; yet the writings themselves and their authors, are innocent of 
having contributed to that delusion, and never bore on them, nor in 
them, any challenge to so high authority as the mistaken piety of 
Christians has ascribed to them, but did all along psofess no more than 
to have been written, as Faustus testifies, not nr, but according to 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ; and by persons of whom indeed it is 
not known who nor what they were, nor was it of any consequence that 
it should be, after the general acquiescence of the church had established 
the sufficient correctness of the compilation they had made. 

* Nee ab ipso ncriptmn constat, nee ab ejus apostolus sed longo post tempore 
a quibusdam incerti nomtnis viris, qui ne sibi non haberetur fides seribentibus 
quae nescirent, parti m apostelorum, partim eorutn qui apostolos secuti viderentur 
noraina scriptorura suorum frontibus indiderunt, asseveraptes secundum eos, 
se scripsisse quae scripserunt. — Quoted by Lardner, vol. 2, p. 221.— Set 
Chapter 7, p. 66, of this Dieoesis. 



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OP THR FOUR GOSPELS IN GENERAL. 107 

And here the longo post tempore, (th* great while after,) is a 
favourable presumption of the sufficient opportunity that all persons* 
had, of knowing and being satisfied, that the gospels which the church 
received, were indeed all that they purported to be ; that is, faithful 
narrations of the life .and doctrines of Christ, awarding to what could 
be collected from . the verbal accounts which his apostles had given, or 
by tradition been supposed to have given, and as such, " worthy of all 
acceptation." 

While the objection of Faustus, becomes from its own nature the 
most indubitable and inexceptionable evidence, carrying us up to the 
very early age, the fourth century, in whieh he wrote, with a demonstra- 
tion, that the gospels were then universally known and aeceived, under 
the precise designation, and none other, than that with- which they have 
come down to us, even as the gospels respectively, according to Mat- 
thew, Mark, Luke and John. 

Of course there can be no occasion to pursue the inquiry into the 
authenticity of the Christian scriptures, lower down than the fourth 
century. 

1. Though, in that age, there was no established canon or authorita- 
tive declaration, .that such and none other, than those which have 
come down to us, were the books which contained the Christian rule of 
faith. 

2. And though " no manuscript of these writings now in existence 
is prior to the sixth century, and various readings which, as appears 
from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testa- 
ment, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present 
remaining." — Michaelis, vol 2, p. 160. 

3. And though many passages which are now found in these scrip- 
tures were not contained in any ancient copies whatever ; 

4. And though " in our common editions of the Greek Testament, 
are many readings, which exist not in a single manuscript, but are 
founded Ota mebe conjecture." — Marsh's Aftchaelis, vol. 2, p. 496. 

5. £nd though " It is notorious, that the orthodox charge the here- 
tics wUh corrupting the text, and that the heretics recriminate upon the 
orthodox."— Unitarian New Version, p. 121. 

6. And though " it is an undoubted fact, that the heretics were in 
the right in many points of criticism, where the fathers accused them 
of wilful corruption.*— Bp. Marsh, voL 2, p. 362. 

* By all persons, understanding strictly all persons, for the common people 
were nobody, and never at any time had any voice, judgement, or option, in the 
business of religion, hut always believed, that which their godfathers and god- 
mothers did promise and vow that they should believe. God or dev:J, and any 
scriptures their masters pleased, were always all one to them. 



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108 OF THE FOCrt GOSPELS IN GENERAL. 

7. And though " it is notorious, that forged writings under the Daisies 
of the Apostles were in circulation almost from the apostolic age." — 
See 2 Thess. ii. 2, quoted in Unitarian New Version.* 

8. And though, "not long after Christ's ascension into heaven, 
several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabu- 
lous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were 
not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and 
ignorance," — Mosheim, vol. 1, p. 109. 

9. And though, says the great Scaliger, " They put into their 
scriptures whatever they thought would serve their purpose."! 

10. And though "notwithstanding those twelve known infallible 
and faithful judges of controversy (the twelve Apostles), there 
were as many and as damnable heresies crept in, even in the apostolic 
age, as in any . other age, perhaps, during the same space of time. — 
Reeve'* Preliminary Discourse to the Common itory of Fincentius IAri- 
nemis, p. 190. 

11. And though there were in the manuscripts of the New Testa- 
ment, at the time of editing the last printed copies of the Greek text, 
upwards of one hundred and thirty thousand various readings." — 
Unitarian New Version, p. 22. 

12. And though " the confusion unavoidably in these versions (the 
ancient Latin, from which all our European versions are derived), had 
arisen to such a height, that St. Jerome, in his Preface to the Gospels, 
complains that no one copy resembled another." — Michaelis 9 vo\.2. p. 1 19. 

13. And though the gospels fatally contradict each other; that is, 
in several important particulars, they do so to such an extent, as no 
ingenuity of supposition has yet been able to reconcile : only the 
most stupid and ignorant of Methodist parsons, and canting, arrogant 
fanatics, any longer attempting to reconcile them, after Marsh, Michaelis, 
and the most learned critics, have struck, and owned the conquest.^ 

14. And though the difference of character between the three lirst 
gospels, and that ascribed to St. John, is so flagrantly egregious, that 
the most learned Christian divines, and profoundest scholars, have 
frankly avowed that the Jesus Christ of St. John, is a wholly different 
character from the Jesus Christ of Matthew, Mark, and Luke ; and 
that their account and his Should both be true, is flatly impossible.^ 

* " Almost from the apostolic age ;* Why the text itself, if it prove any thing, 
proves that such forged writings were in existence absolutely in the apostolic 
age, and among the apostles themselves. 

t Omnia que Christianismo conducere putabant bibliis suis interseruerunt.— 
Tin d alio citante. 

I See Bishop Marsh's Surrender, quoted in chapter 17. 

§ Si forte accidisset, ut Johannis Evangelism per octodecim secula prior* 



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byGoqgk 



OF THE POUR GOSPELS IN GENERAL. 109 

15. And though such was the idolatrous adulation paid to the au- 
thority of Origen, that emendations of the text which were but suggested 
by him, were taken in as part of the New Testament ; though he 
himself acknowledged that they were supported by the authority of no 
manuscript whatever.— Marsh, in loco. 

16. And though, even so late as the period of the Reformation, we 
have whole passages which have been thrust into the text, and thrust 
out, just as it served the turn which the Protestant tricksters had to 
serve. 

17. And though we have on record the most indubitably historical 
evidence, of a general censure and correction of the Gospels having 
been made at Constantinople, in the year 506, by order of the emperor 
Anastasius.* 

18. And though we have like unquestionable historical evidence, of 
measureless and inappreciable alterations of the same, having been made 
by our own Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury, for the avowed 
purpose of accommodating them to the faith of the orthodox.! 

19. And though there are other passages retained and circulated as 
part of the word of God, which are known and admitted by all parties 
to be wilful interpolations, and downright forgery and falsehood. 

20. And though we see with our own eyes, and witness in our own 
experience — as per example, in the Athanasian Creed— that nothing 
could be so absurd, so false, so wicked, but that it would be retained 
and supported by our Christian clergy, on the selfsame principle as that 
on which they support all the rest on't,— even because it supports 
them ! 

Yet, after all, we shall find thousands of interested and aspiring 
pedants, pretending to reconcile what cannot be reconciled, to prove 
what cannot be proved, and to show that to be true, which every sense 
and faculty of man attests and demonstrates to be false. It is, however, 

prorsus ignotuni jacuisset, et nostris demum temporibus, in medium prodactum 
esset, omnes baud dubie unooreconfi^eremur Jesuma Johannedescriptumlonge 
ahum esse ac ilium Matthaei, Marei el Lues, nee utramque descriplionem simul 
veram esse posse.— Carol. Tkeoph. Bretschnider Probab. Liptia, 1820. 

* Here it is. " Messala V. C. console, Constant inopoli, juhente Anastask) 
Imperatore, sancta evangelta, tanquam ab idiotis evangelistis eomposita, repre- 
hendunturetemendantur." — Victor Tununensis, Cave's Historic Literaria, vol, 1, 
p. 41 5 — i. e. u The illustrious Messala being Consul; by the command of the 
Emperor Anastasius, the holy Gospel*, at having been written by idiot evangelists, 
are censured and corrected.— Victor, Bishop of Tunis, in Africa. 

f See Beausobre, quoted in the Manifesto o/ the Christian Evidence Society ; 
and this, and the preceding extract vindicated, in the author's Syntagma, against 
the vituperations of the evangelical Dr. John Pye Smith, in locis. 



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110 



ORIGIN 08 TBR THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 



on the ground of inspiration, that they ultimately rest their pretensions : 
it was on that ground that the Tower of Babel was built ; that we leave 
them ; but on the ground of history, criticism, reason, and natural 
evidence, they have no rest for the sole of their foot I recommend 
them to treat us with contempt, and to send us to Coventry, and not to 
Oakham. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

ON TBS ORIGIN OF OUB THEEE FOtST CANONICAL GOSPELS. 

That our three first canonical gospels have a remarkable similarity to 
each other ; and that the three first evangelists («c. Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke) frequently agree, not only in relating the same things in the 
same manner, but likewise in the same words, is a fact of which every 
one must be convinced who has read a Greek Harmony of the 
Gospels. In some cases, all the Evangelists agree word for word, as 
thus : 



• Matthew, xxiv. S3. 

Now learn a parable 
of the fig-tree ; when his 
branch is yet tender, and 
putteth forth leaves, ye 
know that summer i$ 
nigh : so likewise, ye, 
when ye shall see all 
these things, know that 
it is near, even at the 
doors. Verily, I say 
unto you, this generation 
shall not pass, till all 
these things be fulfilled. 
Heaven and earth shall 
pass away, but my words 
shall not pass away. 



Mark, xiii, 20. 

Now leam a parable 
of the fig-tree; when her 
branch is yet tender, and 
putteth forth leaves, ye 
know that summer is 
near: so ye, in like man- 
ner, when ye shall see 
these things come to pass, 
know that it is nigh, even 
at the doors. Verily, I say 
unto you, that this genera- 
tion shall not pass, till 
all these things be done. 
Heaven and earth shall 
pass away, but my words 
shall mot pass away . 



Luke/ xxi. 31. 

Behold the fig-tree, and 
all the trees; when they 
now shoot forth, ye see and 
know of your ownselves, 
that summer is now nigh 
at hand : so likewise, ye, 
when ye see these things 
come to pass, know ye that 
the kingdom of God is 
nigh at hand. Verily, I 
say unto you, this genera- 
tion shall not pass away, 
tillaHbefulfilled. Heaven 
and earth shall pass away, 
but my words shall not 
pass away.. 



These phenomena are inexplicable on any ether than one of the 
I two following suppositions, either that St. Matthew, St. Mark, and 
I St. Luke, copied from each dther, or that all three drew from a common 
1 source. 



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ORIGIN OP THE THREE PIW3T QO0PSL& 111; 

In Mark ziii. 13 to 32, there is such a close verbal agreement, for 
twenty verses together, with the parallel passage in St Matthew's 
gospel, that the text of St. Matthew and St. Mark might pass for one 
and the same text. 

" The most eminent critics are at present decidedly of opinion that 
one of the two suppositions most necessarily be adopted— either that 
the three evangelists copied from each other, or that ail the three drew 
from a common, source, and that the notion of an absolute independence, 
in respect to the composition of our three first gospels, is no longer ' 
tenable. Tet the question, whieh of these two suppositions ought to 
be adopted in preference to the other, is still in agitation ; and each of 
them has such able advocates, that if we were guided by the authority 
of names, the decision would be extremely difficult"* 

Difficult as the decision may be ; to the great end of this general 
view of the evidence affecting the claims of divine revelation, it is 
utterly indifferent *, since either alternative affords results equally con- 
clusive, and equally militant against the character of those through 
whose hands these writings have come down to us. In either alterna- 
tive, they are not original writings ; they are not what they purport to 
be ; and the writers stand convicted, at least, of negative imposture, 
(if indeed the imposture is attributable to them,) in passing their com* 
positions off as original, and attempting to conceal from us the help 
they borrowed from each other, or what the common source was from 
which they each of them. drew. 

Le Clerc, in his Historia Critica, published at Amsterdam, a. j>. 
1716, seems to have been the first among modern divines who ventured 
to put forth the startling supposition that these three gospels were in 
part derived from either similar or the self-same sources.f 

This opinion lay dormant upwards of sixty years, till it was revived 
by Michaelis, in the third edition of his Introduction, published 1777. 
Dr. Sender, however, was the first writer who made it known to the 
public that our three first evangelists used in common a Hebrew or 
Syriac document or documents, from which they derived the principal 
materials of their history; in a treatise published at Halle, in 1783 ; 
but he has delivered it only in a cursory manner ; and as the thought 
was then new, he does not appear to have had any very determinate 
opinion on the subject. The probability is, that he dared not at that 
time have ventured to put forth a determinate opinion on the subject 

* Bishop Marsh's Michaelis, vol. 3, part 2, p. 170. 

f Quidni credamus tria h«c evangelia panim jetita esse ex similibus, aut 
itsdem fontibus. — Le Clerc 9 Hut. Crit. in toco. 



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li'2 ORIGIN OF THE THREE FIRST GOSPELS. 

We find Bishop Marsh himself, even in this learned dissertation, the 
Highest authority I could adduce on the subject, confessing " that the 
easiest and the most prudent part that he could take, would be merely 
to relate the opinions of others, without hazarding an opinion of his 
own." There was little fear that so high a dignity of the church 
would, for any opinion he might hazard, be liable to be dealt with 
as an humbler heretic of his communion. The episcopal palace of 
Peterborough is far enough from Oakham Gaol ; yet, for all that, a 
bishop will never be found wanting of the virtue of prudence. 

The express declaration of Eusebius, that the Therapeutse described 
by Philo were Christians, and that their sacred scriptures were our 
Gospels, after having lain dormant for fourteen hundred years, now at 
length rises, upon the admissions of these learned divines, into the 
dimensions of its real importance. From these sacred legends, of a 
sect so long anterior to the epocha assigned to Christ and his apostles, 
oar Christian scriptures have been plagiarised ; and the first position 
of the Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, for the public main- 
tenance of which the author of this Diegesis endures the fate of felony 
and crime, is nothing more than had in other words been previously 
published, by the learned bishop in whose diocese he is a prisoner. 

" Committunt eadem diverso crimina fato 

Ille crucem soeleris pretium tulit, hie diadema."* 

Eusebius, however, is not alone, even among the ancients, in betraying 
the fact of this great plagiarism. Hints and inuendoes occur in a 
thousand places, pointing out the same fact, to those who were 
entitled by learning and office to be intrusted with what Origen signi- 
cantly calls the Arcana Imperii, or secrets of the management ; while, 
as the custody of the sacred books was never committed to the people, 
and they were expressly forbidden to examine into the foundations of 
their faith, nothing was more facile, nothing more practicable, than for 
the heads and rulers of the church to modify and adopt those previously 
existing romances, w hose effect in subduing the reason of mankind had 
been found by long experience, and which were too ancient to be found 
out, too sacred to be suspected, and too mysterious to be understood. 

Epiphanius, as long ago as the fourth century, speaking of the verbal 
harmony of the gospels, which he calls their preaching harmoniously 



* " They commit the same things with a different fete : one bath borne the 
mitre as the price of his exploit — the other, the cross. 



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NIEMEYER'S HYPOTHESIS. 11.1 

end alike* accounts for It by saying, that they were drawn from the 
tame fountain ; t though he has not explained what he meant by the 
same fountain. 



LESSING8 HYPOTHE8I8. 

But it was in the year 1784, in the posthumous works of Letting, 
published at Berlin, that the hypothesis of a common Syriac or Chaldee 
origin was decidedly maintained, and put forth to the world with much 
more precision than the fortitude of Semler had ventured. Leasing 
was dead first. It is not from living authors, or from those who wish 
to live, that the world has to look for important discoveries in theology. 
Those who offer truth to the Christian community, must ever provide 
for their escapes from the consequences of doing so. 



niemeyeb's hypothesis. 

Six years afterwards (in 1790), the important truth was taken up 
and allowed to be spoken, in consequence of meeting the appro- 
bation of Dr. Niemeyer, Professor of Divinity in Halle, who, in his 
Coejeetures in illustration of the Silence of most of the Writers of the 
New Testament, concerning the beginning of the Life of Jesus Christ, 
says, that " If credit be due to the authority of the Fathers, there 
existed a most ancient narration of the life of Jesus Christ, written 
especially for those inhabitants of Palestine who became Christians 
from among the Jews]:" " This narrative is distinguished by various 
names, as the Gospel of the Twelve Jpostles — the Gospel of the 
Hebrews — the Gospel according to Matthew — the Gospel of the Naza- 
rtnee ; and this same, unless all things deceive me, is to be considered 
as the fountain from which other writings of this sort have derived their 
origin, as streams from the spring."§ 

fir. Niemeyer further adds, in a passage to which Bishop Marsh 

* £vfi$b»ofc»$ xou ww$ %npv£»*. — Haeres. 51. 6. 

t On t{ «vt9K rwvnyK tff/Mirrau. 

t Jam si fides habenda est patrura autoritate antiqtussima extitit de vita Jesn 
Christi nanratio, in ustun eorum, qui e J u dais Christiani fecti eraut, Palaesti- 
neosmm imprimis scripta. 

§ H«c narratio variis Dominions insignitur, quo pertinent Evangelium 
dttodecim Apostoloruro, Hebrsorum, Nazaneorooi, flecundum Matthaeum: 
etdemoue, nisi me omnia tallunt, pro foute habenda est, e quo reliqua id genus 
icripta tanquam rivuli originem tuam duxerunt. 

15 T 



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*U NIEMEYERS HYPOTHESIS. 

invokes oar especial attention, that *" Since this book of which we 
apeak contained the narrations of the apostles concerning the life of 
Christ, not only is it credible from the importance of its argument, that 
copies of it should have been in the hands of the generality of Chris- 
tians, whom it ought chiefly to have concerned to behold the divine 
image of their master, but that in each particular copy, would be 
written as a sort of supplement, whatever any one had found to be 
true concerning Christ from other sources: so that indeed, even in the 
age of the apostles, there might have been several selections of these 
memoirs : which, if it be admitted, many things can be most easily 
explained, which otherwise render the origin of our gospels very 
obscure. In the first place, the clear agreement of Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke, in many parts of their gospels, not only in the resemblance 
of the subjects of which they treat, but in the use of the same words, 
is understood. Make a hundred men to have been witnesses of the 
same fact ; make the same hundred to have written accounts of what 
they saw; they will agree in matter, they will differ in words : — nor 

* Cum vero conuneret hie liber, de quo quaerimus Apostolorum de vita 
Christi narrationes, non modo propter argument gravitatem credibile est, ejus 
exemplaria in plurimorum christianorum manibus fuisse, quorum maxime 
debebat interesse divinam magistri sui imaginem intueri, verum etiam singulis 
exemplaribus ea, quae quisque aliunde de Christo comperto haberet, tanquam 
auctaria adscripta esse: itaquidem ut vel Apostolorum aevo, plures extiterunt 
horum memorabilium reeensiones. 

Quod si sumitur ; multa facillime explicari possunt, quae, sublata ista hypo- 
thesi, admodum obscures reddunt evangeliorum nostrorum origines. Primum 
intelligitur consensus Matthsei, Marci, Lucse, per plures evangeliorum suorum 
partes, non modo in rerum quas tractunt simuitudine, verum etiam verborum 
conspiration perspicuus: Fac centum homines ejusdem facti fuisse testis ; fee 
centum ipsos quoa viderint masdasse Uteris: Consentient re, different verbis: 
nee quisquam casu factum esse judicabit, si vel tres aut quatuor ex eorum 
• numero rem ita narraverint, ut per plurimarum periodorum seriem, verbum 
verbo respondeat. Hoc vero quis ignorat sexcenties observari in evangelistarum 
wmmentariiil Atqui hoc mirum non est. Nempe ex eodem hauserunt fonte. 
Memorabilia Christ! et dicta et facta Hebraice scripta, in usum Graece loquen- 
tium, Graeca fecerunt. 

Qui vero factum est, ut Lucus alium sequeretur rerum ordinem, quam 
Matthseus ; utin Marco plura desiderentur,in Matthaeo, cujus vestigia, premere 
videtur obvia? Ut in singulis partibus, alter altero verbosior, in observandis 
rebus minutis diligentior reperiatur? Quonium, ut diximus, mora fuit excro- 
planum, quae ista Apostolorum. A3ro/wev/u»T« complectebantur dwersitas. 
Deinde, quoniam liberum fuit iis, qui ex istis Commentariis sua evangelia con- 
cinnabant, addere quae sibi aliunde innotuissent, resecare quae vel subtest fide^ 
vel minus utilia lectoribus, et a suo scribendi consilio remota judicarenu 



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BICHHORN'S HYPOTHESIS. 115 

will any one say that it happened by accident, if even three or four out 
of their number, had so related the story, as to answer word for word, 
through a course of many periods. 

" But who is ignorant, that such an agreement is to be observed 
repeatedly in the commentaries of the Evangelists ? But this is not 
wonderful : since they drew from the same fountain. They trans- 
lated the memorable sayings and actions of Christ, which were written 
in Hebrew, into Greek, for the use of those who spoke the Greek 
language. But, how came it that Luke should follow a different 
arrangement from Matthew ? That many things should be wanting in 
Mark, that are readily to be met with in Matthew, whose steps he 
seems to follow ? That in particular parts, one should be found more 
wordy than the other? in observing minute circumstances more 
diligent? — Why ! Because as we have said, there really was a wonder- 
ful diversity in the copies which contained those memoirs of the 
apostles: and, secondly, because it was optionable for those who 
composed their gospels, out of those commentaries, to add whatever 
they knew of the matter from other sources, and to cut off whatever 
they considered to be of equivocal credibility, or less useful to readers 
and alien from their object in writing/' 



THE QUESTION PROPOSED IN THE UNIYER8ITX OF GOTTI5GEN, 
A. D. 1793. 

In 1793, the theological faculty at Gottingen, proposed for the prize 
dissertation the question ; — " What was the origin of the Gospels of 
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John f From what fountains did the 
authors of those gospels draw ? For what readers in particular, and 
with what aim did they write, and how, and at what time came it to 
pass, that those four gospels acquired a greater authority, than that of 
the gospels which are called apocryphal; and became canonical f* 
The prize was adjudged to Mr. Halfeld, who maintained that the 
Evangelists extracted their gospels from different documents. For 
proposing a similar question in London, in the year 1828, the 
author of this Dieoesis obtained the prize, of a year's imprisonment, 
in Oakham Gaol, in the County of Rutland. 



DR. EIGHHORN's HYPOTHESIS. 

In his dissertation, On the origin of our Three First Gospels, 
printed in 1794, in the fifth volume of his Universal Library, of Biblical, 



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116 BBAUSOBRE'S HYPOTHESIS. 

Literature,* by far the most important of all the Essays which hare 
appeared on this subject, Dr. Eichhorn, supposes that only one docu- 
ment was used, by all three Evangelists, but be supposes that various 
additions had been made in various copies of it, and that three differ- 
ent copies, thus variously enriched, were respectively used by our 
three first Evangelists, independently of each other. According to 
Eichhorn's- hypothesis, the proprietors of different copies of this 
document, added in the margin, those circumstances, which had come 
to their knowledge, but which were unnoticed by the author or authors 
of the documents ; and these marginal additions were taken by subse* 
quent transcribers into the text. 

Eichhorn is decidedly of opinion, that the original document, of 
which the Evangelists used various copies, was written, not in Greek, 
but in Hebrew, or Chaldee : which alone accounts for the phenomenon 
of their sometimes using different, but synonymous Greek expressions, 
in relating the same thing. " We possess, (says he,) in our three first 
gospels, three translations of the above-mentioned short Life of Christ, 
which were made independently of each other. Examples, (he states,) 
may be produced, which betray even an inaccuracy of translation." 

The phenomena, in the verbal agreement of our three first gospels, 
are, however, of such a particular description, as to be wholly incom- 
patible with the notion of three independent translations of the same 
original. They are of such a particular description, that it lay not 
within the power of transcribers to have produced them. They afford 
so severe a test, that no other assignable cause, than that by which the 
effects were really produced, can be expected to account for them." 

Eichhorn expressly declares that he leaves the question undecided, 
whether our three first Evangelists made use of the Hebrew document, 
or whether they had only translations of it. 



beausobbe's hypothesis. 
t" At the head of the first class [of Scriptures] are to be placed two 

* The German title is Allgemeine Bibliothek der Biblischen Literatur; a 
periodical publication. 

f " II feut mettre a la tete de la premiere classe deux Evangiles. . . Le 
plus ancien de tout est a mon avis, t'Evangile selon le* Hebrews, que les Naza- 
reenes pretendoient etre I'original de S. Matthieu. II commencoit par ces mots 
Eywrro n rati nfupou; Hp«J».— op. Eptph. Hot, 30. 

.... 11 parait, par les fragmens, qui nous en ont &e* consenrei 



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BKAUSOBRB'S HYPOTHESIS. IV 

gospels [that, according to the Hebrews, and that according to 
tub Egyptians.] In my opinion, the Gospel according to the He- 
brews, is the most ancient of all. This the Nazarenes pretended, was 
the original from which that of St. Matthew was taken. It began with 
these words — " It happened in the daye of Herod." 

" It appears from the fragments of it which have been preserved to 
us, that it contained no heresy, and that with the exception of some cir- 
cumstances, the history of our Lord was therein faithfully related. It 
is in this Gospel that we read the history of the woman taken in adul* 
tery, which is told in the 8th chapter of St. John; and since this was 
not contained in many copies of this latter gospel, some persons have 
conjectured that it was taken out of the Gospel of the Nazarenes, and 

qu'il ne contsnoit aucune hlresie, et qu'a quelques circonstances pres l'Histoire 
de Notre Seigneur y £toit rapportes naelement. 

C'est dans cet Evangile qu on lisoit I'histoirede la femme surprise en adultere, 
laquelle est racontee au Chap. viii. de S. Jean. Et comme elle n'etoit pas dans 
plusieurs exemplaires de ce dernier Evangile, quelques-ons ont conjecture^ 
qu'elle avoit &e* prise de l'Evangile des Nazareens ; et inslne* dans S. Jean. Si 
ecla eat vrai c'est un temoignage que les Anciens rendent a l'Evangile des 
Nazareens % et si cette histoire a ivi originairement dans S. Jean, c%st una 
autre preuve de la verity de leur Evangile. 

Celui, que l'on a nomine* selon let Egvptiensest de lam toe antique. Origine 
en a fait mention. Clement d'Alexandrie l'avoit deja all^gue* en quelques en- 
droits. Et si la Seconde Epitre de Clement Romain est de lui, cet Evangile 
auroit un temoignage plus ancien que celui de ces deux Dooteurs. On a aussi, 
dans la BibliotLeque des Peres, un Commentaire sur S. Luc qu'on attribue & 
Tite de Bostres, dans lequel cet Eveque semble mettre l'Evangile selon les 
Egyptieus au rang de ceux que S. Luc a indiquez, et par consequent anterieurs 
au sien. Comme les Encratites le citoient pour defendre leur Erreur sur le 
Marriage, les P&res n'en ont point rejette' absolument les temoignages. lis ont 
tach£ de les expliquer dans un sens orthodoxe ; ce qui montre, que ce Livre 
avoit une sorte d'autoritl, et qu'on ne le soupconnoit pas metne d'avoir &6 sup- 
pose par des Herltiques. Quand j'ai consider^, qu'il etoit recu par les Chretiens 
d'Egypte, je n'a pu ma defendre de la pensee, qu'il avoit 6i6 ecrit par des 
Ess£mens, qui avoient cru en J. Christ. La Religion de ces Gens la tenoient 
beaucoup de la Religion Chr6tienne. L'Evangile des Egyptieus &oit plein de 
mystique, de paraboles, d'enigmes, d'allegories. On attribue cela a l'esprit 
de la Nation; pour moi, je l'attribuerois plutdt a l'esprit des Ettenknt. On y 
trouvoit des sentences, qui paroissoient favoriser l'Encratisme. Or les Esseniens 
vivoient dans la continence, et dans l'abstinence. 11 est done bien vraisemblable, 
que des personnts de cette Secte, Judaique, la seule que J. Christ n'ait jamais 
censuree, s'attacherent au Fils de Dieu, le suivirent; et que, s'etant retires en 
Egypte apes sa mort, ils y composlrent une Histoire de sa Vie, et de sa Doc- 
trine, qui parut en Egypte, et qui fut apellee a cause de cela, l'Evangile selon 
les Egyptieus."— Beausob. Munich* Tom. I. p. 455, 456. 



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118 BEAUSOBRE'S HYPOTHESIS. 

inserted m that of St. John. If this be true, it is a testimony which 
the ancients have rendered to the Gospel of the Nazarenes: and if this 
history was originally contained in St. John's Gospel, it is another 
proof of the truth of their gospel. 

" That which has been called the Gospel according to the 
Egyptians, is of the same antiquity. Origen has mentioned it; 
Clemens Alexandrinus had previously quoted it in several places ; and 
if the second epistle of Clemens Romanics be authentic, this Gospel 
would have a testimony even yet more ancient than that of those two 
doctors. There is also in the Library of the Fathers, a commentary 
on St. Luke, attributed to Titus of Bostra, in which this, bishop seems 
to place the Gospel according to the Egyptians in the rank of those 
which St. Luke had investigated, and which consequently were anterior 
to his. Since the Encratites {abstemious monks, Therapeuts) quoted 
it to defend their error concerning marriage, the priests have not alto- 
together rejected its testimonies. They have endeavoured to explain h 
in an orthodox sense ; which shows that this book had a sort of autho- 
rity, and that they never even suspected that it had been foisted in by 
heretics. Upon considering (the unquestionable fact) that it was 
received by the Christians of Egypt, I have not been able to hinder 
myself from thinking, that it was written by the Essenes,' who had 
believed in Jesus Christ. The religion of this people contained a 
great deal of the Christian religion. The Gospel according to the 
Egyptians was full of mysticism, parables, enigmas and allegories: 
this has been attributed to the spirit of the nation ; for my part, 1 
impute it rather to the Essenian cast of character. There may be 
found therein sentences which seemed to favour Encratism (Monkery). 
Now, the Essenians lived in continence and abstinence ; it is then, 
very probable, that persons of this Jewish sect, the only one which 
Jesus Christ never found fault with, attached themselves to the Son of 
God, followed him, and upon retiring into Egypt after his death,, there, 
composed a history of his life and doctrine, which appeared first ia 
Egypt, and which on that account was called the Gospel according 
to the Egyptians.' 

Thus far the most eminent, ingenious and learned of French divines, 
Beausobre* Let the reader take with him the light of this great 
critic's admission quoted page 53, and of his knowledge of the Essenes 

* I particularly wish the reader to observe the superior honesty of Beausobre: 
he alone has the moral courage to utter the name of the original, from which our 
gospels are derived, — the Gospel according to the Egyptians. All the 
rest, aware of the mighty argument with which it teems, seem to say, " Take any 
shape but that, and our firm knees should never tremble l" 



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BISHOP MARSH'S HYPOTHESIS. 119 

and Therapeuts, established io oar seventh chapter, thereupon follow* 
ing ; and cast up the results. He will find that the history of ages so 
" long ago betid," never gave to any fact whatever a higher degree of 
certainty, — than the certainty, that this Egyptian Gospel was the 
Diegesis. or first type, from which our four gospels are mere plagiar- 
isms ; and that it contained the whole story of Jesus Christ, and the 
general rule of faith professed by a set of Egyptian monks, (from what- 
ever sources those monks themselves had derived it, which we shall 
hereafter enquire,) many years, probably ages, before the period 
assigned to the birth of Christ. Consequently, the fallacy of the 
pretence of the real existence of such a personage in Palestine, and in 
or about the age of the emperor Augustus, is absolutely demonstrated. 



BISHOP MARSH'S HYPOTHESIS, 

Bishop Marsh, however, demonstrates that the hypothesis of a com- 
mon Hebrew document, is incapable, in any shape whatever, of ex- 
plaining the phsenonema ; and labours, as it becomes a bishop to do, 
to save the credit of divine inspiration, upon the perplexed hypothesis, 
which his indefatigable ingenuity has excogitated, and than which 
perhaps there is none more probable, that, "St. Matthew, St. Mark, and 
St Luke, all three used different copies of some common document, 
which before any of our canonical Greek gospels existed, was known as 
the Gospel according to the Hebrews, or the Gospel according 
to the twelve Apostles ; a gospel, of which the ancients speak 
with great respect : or the Gospel according to the Nazabenes, 
or the Gospel according to Matthew. The materials of which, 
our St. Matthew who wrote in Hebrew, retained, in the language m 
which he found them, Hebrew, Chaldee, or Syriac : but St. Mark, and 
St. Luke, beside their copies of that original Hebrew, Chaldee, or 
Syriac document, used a Greek translation of it, which had been made 
before any of the additions, which our St. Matthew found in his 
Hebrew copy, had been inserted. Lastly, the person who translated 
St. Matthew's Hebrew copy of that original document into Greek, fre- 
quently derived assistance from the Greek translation of St. Mark, 
where St. Mark had matter in common with St. Matthew ; that is, to 
save his own trouble, he copied the Greek of St. Mark, instead of con- 
tinuing his own translation, de novo, from Matthews's Hebrew trans- 
cript: and in those places, but in those places only, where St. Mark 
had no matter in common with St. Matthew, he frequently had re- 
course, with the same view, to the ready-made Greek of St, Luke's 



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180 THE ONOHOLOOUB. 

Gospel But though the person who translated St Matthew's parti- 
cular Hebrew copy of the common Hebrew document into Greek, did 
compare and collate those two other gospels with his own, yet Matthew, 
Mark, and Luke, had no other knowledge of each other's gospels" 



THE DDSG36I8. 

This first or earlier draught of the life and history of Christ, if 
acknowledged by St. Luke, as the basis of the gospel story, and called 
the Deege8is, or Declaration,* that is, narrative of those things which 
are most suredly believed among us* In the undistinguished manner of 
representing his sense in our English text, it escapes observation, that, 
what is rendered a declaration, &c. really is the title of the work, of 
which this gospel professes no more than to be " a setting forth in 
order/ 9 or more methodical arrangement. 



THE GNOMOLOGUE. 

But besides this Dtegesis, the common basis of the three first 
gospels, as of many others which many had taken in hand, to reduce 
and arrange into more consistent order, there existed also a Gnomo- 
LOGUE,t or collection of precepts, parables, and discourses, which were 
supposed to have been delivered by Christ, at different times, and on 
different occasions; and this, in addition to the Diegesis, was a common 
authority to St. Matthew and St. Luke, though it seems to have been 
unknown to St. Mark. 

Proceeding steadily upon our principle avowed in the motto of this 
work, which binds ns to view all pretences to any thing out of nature, 
as a surrender of all the stress that is laid on so weak an argument; 
the reader will know at once in what sense he is to understand the 
bishop's struggle to bar off the conclusions to which be had thus far 
marshalled our way. Every step which is here supposed, he tells us, 
is perfectly consistent with the doctrine of inspiration, not indeed of 
verbal inspiration, but with that sort of inspiration, in which the Holy 

* TLvuinvtf voXXo* ivtxw&on afar*$oto$ou AIHTHXIN vipt t«» *re*Anpo- 
<Popripvtu)y iy upw icfayitarw — eJo£i xct'/uo*. — Luke i. 1. 

f Such a work seems to be designated under various titles in die Epistles 
of Paul, as the Form of Sound Words, the Doctrine, the Words of our 
Lord Jesus Christ, &c."— 1 Tim. vi, 3. The Doctrine According to God- 
liness, fcc.-r&ff Syntagma, p. 74. 



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OP ST. JOHN'S GOSPEL IN PARTICULAR. Ml 

Ghost watched over the sacred compilers with so suspended a baud, as 
left them to the guidance of their own faculties while they kept clear 
of error; and only interposed, when without this divine assistance, 
they would have been in danger of falling. " With such an inspiration, 
(continues this Right Reverend expositor of the divine mysteries,) the 
opinion that the Evangelists drew a great part of their materials, from 
a written document, is perfectly consistent ; for if that document con- 
tained any thing erroneous, they had the power of detecting and cor- 
recting it." Such is a succinct but accurate view of Bishop Marsh's 
Dissertation on the Origin and Composition of the Three First Cano* 
nical Gospels, of 249 pages, appended to the third volume of his trans- 
lation of Michaelis's Introduction, Edit. 2, London 1802. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

of ST. John's gospel in particular. 

All ecclesiastical writers seem to have agreed in. representing the 
Gospel according to St. John, as written at some considerable length 
of time after the publication of the three other gospels, and generally 
with a view to confute the heresies of the Corinthians,. Sabians, and 
Gnostics, which had either previously existed, or had risen into a mis~ 
chievous notoriety, since the publication of .those gospels. He had 
read the three first gospels before he composed his own, and appears, 
says Bishop Marsh, to have corrected, though, in a very delicate 
manner, the accounts given by his predecessors : which, if his prede- 
cessors were under such an inspiration of the holy spirit, as was suffi- 
cient to keep them clear of error, must indeed have required the 
greatest delicacy. The Bishop, however, has merited our forgiveness 
of this absurdity, by the frankness of his confession, that after all his 
attempts to reconcile the contradiction of St. John's account of the 
resurrection of Christ with that of Mark and Luke, " he has not been 
able to do it, in a manner satisfactory either to himself, or to any other 
impartial enquirer into truth." He concludes with even more than f 
necessary caution, " that if it be true that there are passages in St. 
John's Gospel, which are at variance with the accounts given by the 
other Evangelists, we cannot hesitate to give the preference to St. John, 
who wrote last, and appears to have had an excellent memory ."* 
Some persons have need of excellent memories. 

• Vol. 3. p. 315.— Matthew, Mark, and Luke, it seems, had but indifferent: 
16 v 



. 



199 EVANSON. 

DR. SEMLISll'S HYPOTHESIS. 

Dr Sender contends, that St John wrote before the other three 
Evangelists, and the weight of his authority, which alone would give 
respectability to his criticism, seems to be seconded by the historical 
evidence of the existence of the heretical sects which St John wrote to 
refute, long anterior to any date which Christians have ascribed to the 
three first gospels. An Evangelist, who had seen the Gospels of 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and wished to second and support their 
authority, would hardly have committed himself in the egregious and 
irreconcilable contradictions which this gospel presents, when compared 
with those : and surely no one can be ignorant that the Platonic and 
Pythagorean doctrines, which distinguish and characterize this gospel, 
existed several ages before the birth of Christ. Nor ought the strong 
arguments which the learned have adduced, in proof that Plato and 
Pythagoras themselves were both members of the Therapeutan society, 
or had derived their doctrines from the sacred writings of this sect, to 
be of little weight with us. The universal delusion of ecclesiastical 
history consists in ascribing a later date to earlier institutions, in 
representing that which was the origination, as the corruption of 
Christianity, and in bringing down the monkish and monastic epochs 
to any period below the second or third century, in order to keep the 
clue of the whole labyrinth out of sight, and to evade the clear solution 
of all the difficulties of the inquiry, which presents itself in the feet 
that Eusebius has attested, that the Therapeutan monks were Christians 
many ages before the period assigned to the birth of Christ ; and that 
the Diegesis and Gnomologue, from which the Evangelists compiled 
their Gospels,, were writings which had for ages constituted the sacred 
scriptures of those Egyptian visionaries. 



EVAN80N. 

The learned Evanson, who, though a Unitarian divine, professes 
himself to be a firm believer in revelation, and a disciple of Jesus 
Christ,* marks with triple notes of admiration his astonishment that 

memories, even with the Holy Ghost to jog'em, and John's memory has 
corrected some of the Holy Ghost's blunders. 

O Saint Esprit! La voila ton ouvrage. 
• In his Work on the Dissonance of the Four Evangelists, published 1792, 
p. 222. 



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FALSEHOOD OF GOSPEL OBOORAPUY. 1*8 

the orthodox should receive gospels which so flatly contradict each 
other, as each equally true. And of the adorable miracle of turning 
water into wine, he observes, that coming in so very exceptionable a 
form, upon the testimony of so very exceptionable an historian, it is 
altogether as unworthy of belief as the fabulous Roman Catholic legend 
of St. Nicholas's chickens* 



BUET8CHHEIDER. 

Since Christian tolerance has endured these pregnant admissions 
against the claims of divine revelation, the sceptical world has been 
enriched * by the Probabilia of Bretschneider, published at Leipsic 
1820, in which that illustrious divine, compatibly with an equally 
sincere profession of faith in Christianity ; and what is in some views 
a much more important consideration, compatibly with keeping his 
divinity professorship, and presidency of a protestant university ; has 
shown that the Jesus depicted in the fourth gospel is wholly out of 
keeping, and entirely a different sort of character from the Jesus of 
Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that it is utterly impossible that both 
descriptions could be true ; that this gospel contains no testimony of 
an independent historian, or of a witness to the things therein related, 
but is derived solely from some written or unwritten tradition ; and 
that its author was neither an inhabitant of Palestine, nor a Jew.* 

This, however, is not more than may, from internal evidence, be 
argued against the other evangelists, or at least Matthew and Mark, 
whose writings betray so great an ignorance of the geography, statistics, 
and even language of Judea, as the most illiterate inhabitants of that 
country could by no possibility have fallen into— exempli gratia. 



FALSEHOOD OP GOSPEL GEOGRAPHY. 

1. " He came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts 
of Decapoiis" (Mark viL 31) : when there were no coasts of Deca- 
polis, nor was the name so much as known before the reign of the 
emperor Nero. 

* Jesus, quern depinxit, quattum evangelium, valde diverous est a Jesu 
in prioribus evangeliis descripto— nee utraque descriptio simul rera esse potest — 
£vangetista, nee ea quae (acta esse tradidh, ipse vidit, sed e traditione aut script* 
aut non scripts, hausit— nec^Palestinensis nee Judseus fuiu — Bretschneider in 
Ordine Argumentorvm. 



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194 FALSEHOOD OF GOSPEL GEOGR A PHY. 

2. " He departed from Galilee, and came into the coasts of Judea, 
beyond Jordan? (Matt. xix. 1) : when the Jordan itself was the eastern 
boundary of Judea, and there were no coasts of Judea beyond it* 

P. " But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judea, in the 
room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither: notwithstand- 
ing being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of 
Galilee, and he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth ; that it 
might be fulfilled, which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called 
a Nazarene,* (Matt. ii. 22) : when — 1. It was a son of Herod who 
reigned in his stead, in Galilee as well as in Judea, so that he could 
not be securer in one province than in the other ; and when — 2. It 
was impossible for him to have gone from Egypt to Nazareth, without 
travelling through the whole extent of Archelaus's kingdom, or making 
a peregrination through the deserts on the north and east of the Lake 
Asphaltites, and the country of Moab ; and then, either crossing the 
Jordan into Samaria or the Lake of Gennesareth into Galilee, and 
from thence going to the city of Nazareth ; which is no better geogra- 
phy, than if one should describe a person as turning aside from Cheap* 
side into the parts of Yorkshire ; and when — 3. There were no prophets 
whatever, or certainly none that either Jew or Christian would allow 
to be prophets, who had prophesied that Jesus " should be called a 
Nazarene ;" and when — 4. It is not true (according to the subsequent 
history) that Jesus was ever called a Nazarene ; and when — 5. Naza- 
rene was not a name derived from any place whatever, but from a 
sect of Egyptian monks, and was none other than of the same signi- 
ficancy as Essene or Therapeut — a fact which throws further light on 
this monkish legend ; and when — 6« Had Jesus been a Jew, and 
derived his epitheton according to Jewish customs from the place of 
his birth, he would have been called, not Jesus of Nazareth, but Jesus 
of Bethlehem. 

4. After Christ and the Devil had ended their forty days' familiarity 
in the wilderness, " He departed into Galilee, and leaving Nazareth, 
he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea-coast in the 
borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim, that it might be fulfilled, which 
was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and 
the land of Nepththalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee 
of the Gentiles," &c. (Matt. iv. 12, 13) ; when, to Esaias, or any 
inhabitant of Judea, the country beyond must be the country east of 
the Jordan, (as Gaulonitis), or Galilee of the Gentiles, is well known 
to have been) ; whereas Capernaum was a city on the western side of 
the Lake of Gennesareth, through which the Jordan flows. 

* Evanson, p. 169. 



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FALSEHOOD OF GOSPEL DATES. 135 

<£• " He departed into Galilee, and leaving Natareth, came and 
dwelt at Capernaum? (Matt. iv. 13): as if he imagined that the city 
of Nazareth was not as properly in Galilee as Capernaum was ; which is 
much such geographical accuracy, as if one should relate the travels of 
a hero who departed into Middlesex, and leaving London, came and 
dwelt in Lombard-street. 



FALSEHOOD OF GOSPEL DATES. 

1. The principal indications of time occurring in the Gospels \ 
" And it came to pais in those days, that there went out a decree 

from Ccesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed; and this 
taxing woe first made when Cyrenius was governor ofJSyri*."—Luke 
ii. 1, 2. 

It happens .however, awkwardly enough, 

1st. That there is no mention in any ancient Roman or Greek 
historian, of any general taxing of people all over the world, or the 
whole Roman empire, in the time of Augustus, nor of any decree of 
the emperor for that purpose : and this is an event of such character 
and magnitude, as to exclude even the possibility of the Greek and 
Roman historians omitting to have mentioned it,) had it ever really 
happened. 

2dly. That in those days, that is, " when Jesus was born, in the 
days of Herod the king," Judea was not at that time a Roman province ; 
and it is therefore absolutely impossible that there could have been any 
such taxing there, by any such decree, of any such Caesar Augustus. 

3dly. That Cyrenius was not governor of Syria, till ten or twelve 
years after the time assigned as that of the birth of Christ. 

4thly. That the whole passage is taken from one of those apocry- 
phal gospels which were in full vogue long before this of St. Luke was 
written^ some of which by leaving the times and seasons entirely in the 
hand of God, represented, that this taxing was first made when King 
Solomon was reigning in all his glory, so that Pontius Pilate and he 
were cotemporary, which did well enough before the wicked and seep* 
tical art of criticism began to undermine the pillars of faith. 

2. " There were present at that season, some that told him of the 
Galileans', whose blood Pilate had mingled with their sacrifices. Luke 
xiii. 1* 

No historian, Jewish, Greek or Roman, has made the least allusion 
to this bloody work ; which it is next to impossible that they could 
have failed to do, had it really happened. 



y Google 



H6 FALSEHOOD OF GOSPEL PHRASEOLOGY. 

Such an act was entirely out of character; for Pilate was a Pagan 
and a sacrifices himself and would never have considered idolatry as, a 
crime in any body. We have the solution of the difficulty at once 
by admitting the probability, that as the name of King Herod was 
substituted in the latter or more orderly and methodical transcripts of 
the Diegesis, for that of King Solomon, so the act of good King 
Josiah (2 Kings xxiii.) has here been fathered upon Pontius Pilate. 



FAL8PHQOD OF GOSFEL STATISTICS. 

1. Annas and Caiaphas being the high-priests (Luke iii. 2); when 
any person acquainted with the history and polity of the Jews, must 
have known that there never was but one high priest at a time, any 
more than among ourselves there is never but one Archbishop of 
Canterbury. 

2. Caiaphas, which was the high-priest thai same year, (John viii. 
IS,) being high-priest that year, he prophesied (John xi. 50); when 
no Jew could have been ignorant that the high-priest's office was not 
annual, but for life, and that prophesying was no privilege nor part of 
that office. 

3. " Search and look, for out of Galilee ariseth no prophet," (John 
vii. 52) ; when the most distinguished of the Jewish prophets, Nahum 
and Jonah, were both Galileans. 



FALSEHOOD OF OOSFiX FHRASSOLOQY. 

" They brought the ass and the colt, and put on them their clothes 
and set him thereon" (Matt. xxi. 7) ; t. e. like Mr. Ducrow, at Astley's 
Theatre, a-straddle across them both. This translator of Matthew's 
supposed original Hebrew copy of the Diegesis, being so grossly 
ignorant of the common pleonasm of the Hebrew language, as to mis- 
take its ordinary emphatic way of indicating a particular object by a 
repetition of the word ; as, an ass, " even that which was the son" 
or foal, or had been born of an ass ; for two of the species.* 

* Similar pleonasms, not without considerable beauty, are— 
• " God is not a man, that he should lie, nor the Sou of man, that he should 
*nt." — Numb, xxiii. 19. 



■iMfi* i m ■■ » ■ ■«*■ ntfffiMr— i mi ■ i ■> ■■ 



Qql~«*~ 



ULTIMATE RESULT. I* 

2. " And he said unto them, Go wash in the pool of Siloam, which 
is by interpretation Sent," (John xix. 7)* ; which happens to be an 
interpretation which no Jewish writer could possibly have given: 
Siloam signifying, not Sent, but the place of the sending forth of 
waters, that is, the sluice : to say nothing of the absurdity of repre- 
senting the pool as sent to the man, instead of the man being sent to 
the pool: or of the absurdity of supposing that one who was blind, 
could see his way thither. Sure, here seems to have been a greater 
chance of the poor man's getting his baptism than his conversion. 
This text has so puzzled the commentators, that they have endeavoured 
to get the words * which is by interpretation, Sent,*' considered as a 
mere marginal note ; but the authority of the Codices attests them to 
be a part of the text itself. Whatever, then, be the credit doe to the 
three first evangelists, the fourth may well be considered as neither 
better nor worse, and must stand or fall with them. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 



ULTIMATE RESULT. 



Such errors as we have exemplified, and innumerable other such there 
are, in every one of the four gospels, can be accounted for on no sup- 
positions congruous with the idea of their having been written either 
by any such persons, at any such time, or under any such circum- 
stances, as have been generally assumed for them. But we may chal- 
lenge the whole world's history to furnish, from a period of such 
remote antiquity, a coincidence of circumstantial evidence to prove 
any fact whatever, so strong, so concatenated, and so entirely respon- 
sive to all the claims of the phenomena, as the evidence here adduced, 
that the first types of the Gospel-story sprang from the Egyptian 
monks, and constituted the substance of the mystical romance, which 
they had modified from the Pagan mythology, in conformity to their 

" Shall rise up as a great lion, and lift up himself as a young lion."— Numb, 
xxiii. 21. 

" Lord, what is man, that thou art mindful of him, or the Son of man, that 
thou so regardest him ?"— Psalm. 

* Cap. xix. 7. Ubi auctor vocem SAwctp faiso interpretatur per awrwraX- 
fit»ofr et ex errore rrfw missus, pronuntiavit rrfw Emissio, scil. aquarum Ejusmodi 



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128 ULTIMATE RESULT. 

professed and acknowledged Eclectic Philosophy, and imposed for ante- 
cedent ages on the ecclesiastical colonies, which had migrated from the 
mother church of Alexandria. 

Thus, after Europe and all Christian communities have been for so 
many ages led to believe that in the four Gospels they possessed the 
best translations that could be derived, in their several languages, from 
the original inspired text of immediate disciples and contemporaries of 
Christ; it is at length admitted, that mankind have been and are 
egregiously deceived. 1. It is admitted, that these gospels were not 
written by the persons to whom they are ascribed ; 2. That Matthew, 
Mark, Luke, and John were only translators or copyists of previously 
existing documents ; 3. Composed by we know not whom : 4. We 
know not how ; 5. We know not where ; 6. We know not when : 7. 
And containing we know not what. The very first assertion in the 
title-page of our New Testament, in stating that it is translated from 
the original Greek, involves a fallacy ; since it is absolutely certain 
that the Greek, from which our translations were made, was well nigh 
as far from being original, as the translations themselves, and it is 
absolutely uncertain what the original was. 

Ireneeus indeed, the disciple of Polycarp, which Polycarp is said to 
have conversed with St. John, and who himself lived and wrote in the 
middle of the second century, is the first of all the Fathers who men- 
tions the four evangelists by name. But if this testimony were as 
certainly unexceptionable, as it certainly is not — the being able to trace 
these scriptures so high or even higher than the second century, 
would be no relief to the difficulties of the evidence ; since the same 
testimony attests the antecedent prevalence of the heresies of the Mar- 
cionites, Ebionites and Valentinians, which were to be refuted out of 
these gospels, and which, as they were undoubtedly heresies from 
Christian doctrine, carry us as much too far beyond the mark, as it 
might have been feared that we should fall short of it ; and go to prove, 
that as those heresies, so these gospels which refuted them, existed 
before the time ascribed to the birth of Christ. All the indications 
of date contained in those gospels themselves, are manifestly erroneous. 
It is universally known and admitted, that we have no history, nor 
Christian writing whatever besides, that so much as purports to come 
within the limits of the first century. At any rate, the predicament of 
being too soon on the stage, is as fatal to the congruities of the story, 
as being too late. 

error vero, nee Joanni Apostolo, neque alii cuidam scriptori Judaeo aceidere 
potuisset. Codicum auctoritate prorsus gonuina judicaoda sunt ista verba.— 
Brttichneider. 



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PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 129 

w The history of the New Testament," says Dr. Lardner, " is at- 
tended with many difficulties"— Vol. 1. p. 136. 

What could he mean by difficulties but appearances of not being 
true ? What could he mean by many difficulties, but that such ap- 
pearances are not one, two, or a dozen, but meet us in every page ? 
And what means the labour of his cumbrous volumes, but so much 
labour of so great a man, laid out on the sophistical business of making 
what he virtually admits appears to be falsehood, appear to be truth ? 

All these geographical, chronological, political, and physiological 
perplexities, are such as never could have crossed the path of straight- 
forward narrative ; but are such exactly as would occur to Eclectic 
plagiaries, engaged in the business of setting forth in order a tale of 
the then olden time; fitting new names and new scenery to the cha- 
racters and catastrophes of an antiquated plot ; and endeavouring to 
put an appearance of history and reality upon the creations of fictions 
and romance. 

That this eclectic philosophy of the Alexandrine monks is the true 
parent of their Diegesis, of which the gospels that have come down to 
us, are the legitimate issue, is the demonstration that will meet us 
now at every stage of that comparison of the Pagan and Christian 
theology, which our investigation challenges from us. 



CHAPTER XIX. 

RESEMBLANCES OF THE PAGAN AND CHBI8TIAN THEOLOGY — AUGURY 

AND BI8HOP8 iESCULAPIUS, JESUS CHRIST — HERCULES, JESUS 

CHRIST— ADONIS, JESUS CHRIST. 

No conviction of our reason could be conceived to be more absolute 
and conclusive, than that which assures us of the utter impossibility of 
there being any common features of resemblance between divine truth 
and human imposture. We are not conscious of our own existence 
with a greater degree of certainty, than that by which we know, that a 
religion which hath " God for its author, happiness for its end, and 
truth without any mixture of error for its matter," could have no 
likeness to the foolish and impotent devices of weak and wicked men. 
The existence of such a likeness or resemblance between auy two re- 
ligions whatever, however superior the one might be to the other, 
would itself constitute the surest possible demonstration that both of 
17 b 



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130 PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY* 

them were false. In a religion, then, which purports to be from God, 
we have a right to expect internal evidences of its divinity, and a 
character as infinitely superior to any devices of men-— as infinite wis- 
dom must be superior to human ignorance. 

Having, then, obtained the consent of all parties, that the Christian 
Saviour, if any such person ever lived at all, must have lived and con- 
versed with men in the era of Augustus, that is, eighteen hundred years 
ago, and that all the facts and doctrines of his religion are contained 
in the book called the New Testament* ; this great and important 
question becomes capable of being put to the test — from which, nothing 
that is honest would shrink— 4rom which nothing that is true^ can 
have any thing to fear. Nothing which can be shown to have been 
in existence before the alleged time of the birth of Christ, nothing 
which came into existence long after " his glorious resurrection and 
ascension," can have any claim to be taken for Christianity. If before 
the date assigned to Christianity, and in regions and countries where 
religion under that name was not known, we shall find all the ideas 
which that religion involves, pre-existent, and already familiar to the 
apprehensions of men ; there is no alternative but that the conclusion 
must be endured. To attempt to resist that conclusion, is to resist 
truth itself; to be afraid to do justice to the arguments that may lead 
to that conclusion, is to surrender it, without resistance. 



THE PAGANS THE CHRISTIANS 

1. Apologised for all the apparent 1. Use precisely the same argument 
absurdities of their system, by pleading * in defence of their system, only deny- 
that nothing in it was to be understood ing the benefit of it, to their Pagan 
according to the gross and revolting adversaries. 

sense of the letter, but that the whole 
was to be explained conformably to a 
mystical allegorical meaning which con- 
veyed the most sublime truths. 

2. " For those who preside over the 2. God also hath made us able 
holy Scriptures, philosophise over ministers of the New Testament, not of 
them, and expounding their literal sense the letter, but of the spirit. (2 Co- 
by allegory. — Eusebius, concerning rinth 3, 6.)— Which things are an 
the Therapeutan priests. ~ allegory. (4 Gal. 24). — St . Paul, 



concerning the Christian priests. 



* We say not the Old Testament, though the Bible is a term that compre- 
hends both; The Old Testament will never be vindicated, and ought not to be 
attacked by any man. 



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PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 



131 



CICERO. 

Concerning the Pagan Augurs. 

3. " No order of true religion passes 
over the law concerning the description 
of priests. 

4. " For some have been instituted 
lor the business of pacifying the Gods. 

5. "To preside at sacred ceremonies. 



6. "Others to interpret the predic- 
tions of the prophet. 

7. Not of the many, lest the number 
should be infinite. 

8. " But that none beside the Col- 
lege should understand those predic- 
tions which had been publicly recog- 
nized. 

9. For augury, or the power of fore- 
telling future events, is the greatest and 
most excellent thing in the republic, 
and naturally allied to authority. 



1&. " Nor do I thus think, because 
I am an augur myself; but because it 
is absolutely necessary for us to think 



11. For if the question be of legal 
right, what is greater than the power to 
put away from the highest govern- 
ments, their right of holding counsels, 
and issuing decrees ; or to abolish them 
when holden ? What more awful, than 
for any thing undertaken, to be done 
away, if but one augur hath said other- 
wise. 

12. " What more magnificent than to 
be able to decree, that the supreme 



NEW TESTAMENT. 

Concerning the Christian Bishops. 

3. And God hath set some in the 
church — first apostles, secondarily pro- 
phets, thirdly teachers. — 1 Corinth, 
xii. 28. 

4. O Lord spare thy people, and be 
not angry with us for ever.— Liturgy.* 

5. Let the prophets speak two or 
three, and let the others judge. — 1 Co- 
rinth, xiv. 29. 

6. And let one interpret. — 1 Co- 
rinth, xiv. 27. 

7. Let it be by two, or at the most 
by three, and that by course.— 1 Co- 
rinth, xiv. 27. 

8. Because it is riven unto you (the 
College of Apostles) to know the mys- 
teries of the kingdom of heaven, but to 
them it is not given. — Matt. xiii. 11. 

9. For greater is he that prophesieth, 
than he that speaketh with tongues. 
Desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye 
may prophecy. He that prophesieth, 
speaketh unto men to edincation and 
exhortation, and comfort. — 1 Corinth 
xiv. 3. 

10. Neither have I written these 
things, that it should be so done unto 
me.— 1 Corinth, ix. 15. — Inasmuch as 
I am the apostle of the Gentiles, I 
magnify mine office.— Rom. xi. 13. 

11. Dare any of you, having a mat- 
ter against another, go to law before the 
unjust, and not before the saints. Know 
ye not that we shall judge angels ? How 
much more things that pertain to this 
life?— 1 Corinth vi. 3. 

If he neglected to hear the church, 
let him be unto thee as an heathen man, 
and a publican. — Matt, xviii. 17. 

12. verily I say unto you, whatso- 
ever ye shall bind on earth, shall be 



* This attribute of being angry for ever, is peculiar to the Christian God, 
and has become, in consequence, peculiarly characteristic of Christians.. 



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PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 



CICERO. 

governors should resign their magis- 
tracy? What more religious than to 
give or not to give the right of treating 
or transacting business with the people? 
What than to annul a law if it hath not 
been duly passed, — and for nothing 
that hath been done by the government, 
either at home or abroad, to be ap- 
proved by any one, without their au- 
thority ?* — De Legibus, lib. ii. 1 2. 

PHILO. 

13. " In addition to these circum- 
stances, Philo describes the order of 
preferment among those who aspire to 
ecclesiastical ministrations, and the 
offices of the deacons, and the pre- 
eminency above all of the bishop," — 
See chap. 10. 



NEW TESTAMENT. 

bound in heaven ; and whatsoever ye 
shall loose on earth, shall be loosed in 
heaven. — Matt. xvii. 18. 



NEW TESTAMENT. 

12. To all the saints in Christ Jesus 
which are at Pbilippi with the bishops 
and deacons. — 1 Philip, i. 

For they that have used the office of 
a deacon well, purchase to themselves 
a good degree. 

If a man desire the office of a 
bishop, he desireth a good work.— 
1 Timothy hi. 13. 



ROYAL PRIE8T8. 

Among the ancient Greeks, the dignity of the priesthood was esteemed 
so great in most of their cities, and especially at Athens, as to be 
joined with that of the civil magistrate. Thus Anius, in Virgil, was 
king of Delos, and priest of Apollo.T In Egypt, the kings were all 
priests; and if any one who was not of the royal family, usurped the 

* No wonder, then, that such a power was not allowed to be held in separation 
from the imperial dignity itself. The Jewish Messiah, or Christ, united in his 
own person the several offices of prophet, priest, and king. The figures of 
Romulus, the founder of Rome, represent him as clad in the trabea, a robe of 
state, which implied an ecclesiastical as well as a secular dignity. The lituus, 
or staff of augury in his hand, is still retained as the crosier of our Christian 
bishops. "This latter mark of distinction (the episcopal crosier) usually attends 
the representations of the heads of Julius Caesar in old gems and medals, in 
signification that he was high-priest and king, by the same right as Romulus had 
been." BeWs Pantheon in loco quo. Augustus, Vespasian, Verus, &c. are in 
like manner accompanied with the insignia of augury. So sacred were these 
holy orders, that none who had once been a member of the sacred college, could 
ever be degraded : the commission of the greatest enormity was not held compe- 
tent to affect their indefeasible sanctity of character, or to forfeit their title of 
The Reverend; which their descendants still retain, in a never-interrupted 
succession of inheritance from their Pagan ancestors. 

f Rex Anius, Rex idem hominum, Phoebique Sacerdos. — Virg. JEn, 3, v. 80. 



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PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 133 

kingdom, he was obliged to be consecrated to the priesthood, before 
he could ascend the throne. At Sparta, the kings, immediately upon 
their promotion, took upon them, the two priesthoods of the heavenly, 
and the Lacedemonian Jupiter ; and all the sacrifices for the safety of 
the common wealth, were offered by them onlj^ 



SUBORDINATE CXEEQY. 

Besides these royal priests, there were others taken from the body 
of the people, and consecrated to the service of religion. These were 
all accounted the ministers of the gods, and by them commissioned to 
dispense their favour to mankind. Whoever was admitted to this 
holy office, was obliged to be of the most exemplary and virtuous cha- 
racter. They were required to be upright in mind and pure in heart 
and life, as well as perfect (o^iXik) in body : they were to live chastely 
and temperately, abstaining from those pleasures which were considered 
innocent in other men. After their admission into holy orders, though 
marriage was not altogether forbidden, they were obliged and expected 
to preserve the most rigid chastity. They endeavoured to weaken or 
overcome " all the sinful lusts of the flesh," by drinking the juice of 
hemlock, and by strewing the herb agnus castus, or chaste lamb under 
their bed clothes, which was believed to possess refrigerating qualities. 



THE FBIE8TS OF CYBELE 

Who held the dignity of Theoiokos, Deipara, or Mother of God, 
which has since been transferred to the Virgin Mary, so conscien- 
tiously cut themselves off from the faculty of sinful sensations, as to 
deserve the commendation of Christ himself— Matt. xix. 12 ; and to 
be imitated in so unequivocal a proof of sincere devotion, by the most 
learned and distinguished of christian bishops, Origen, Melito, &c 



PARASITES OB DOMESTIC CHAPLAINS. 

Another holy order of priests, was that of the Parasiti, or Parasites* 
whose office was to gather from the husbandmen, the corn that was to 
be set aside for the services of the ministry. It was at last an office of 
great honour ; the Parasites being by the ancient laws reckoned among 
the chief magistrates. In every village of the Athenians they main- 



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134 CONVERSION. 

tained these priests at the public expense; but afterward*, to ease the 
Commonwealth of this burden, the wealthier sort were obliged to enter- 
tain them at their own tables, whence the word parasite, in later times, 
has been put for a flatterer, who, for the sake of a dinner, conforms to 
every one's humour. T^na holy order of Parasites, is continued in oar 
Christian church, in precisely the same character and function, under 
the less invidious name of domestic chaplains, who, hanging about the 
establishments of princes and nobles, generally contrive to worm 
themselves into the most lucrative ecclesiastical benefices upon the 
well-known economy, 

" Non missura est cutera nisi plena cruoris hirudoV 



CONVERSION FROM PAGANISM TO CHRISTIANITY, BROUGHT ABOUT 
ENTIRELY BY A TRANSFER OF PROPERTY. 

Notwithstanding the conversion of Constantine to the Christian 
faith, the title, the ensigns, and the prerogatives of sovereign pontiff 
were accepted without hesitation, by seven successive Christian empe- 
rors. Gratian was the first who refused the pontifical robef, and. 
threw off the badges of Paganism ; for though he retained the title of 
Sovereign Pontiff, he performed no part of its functions.^ From 
motives no doubt of the most disinterested piety, " this emperor seized 
the lands *nd endowments which had been allotted to maintain the 
priests and sacrifices of the ancient Paganism, and appropriated them 
to his own use."§ a. d. 382. 

We have yet extant, and happily I have here on my table, the cele- 
brated oration delivered by Julius Firmicius Maternus,| to the Em- 
perors Constantius and Constans, the sons and successors of Constan- 

* The leech will not drop from your skin till it is full of blood. — Horace. 

t Gibbon, vol. 3. p. 409. 

J Bell's Panth. vol. 1, p. 19. § Lardner, vol.4, p. 455. 

|| Tollite, tollite securi, sacratissimi Imperatores, ornamentatemplorum. Deos 
istos, aut monetae ignis, aut metallorum coquat flamma. Donaria universa 
ad utilitatem vestram dominiumque transferte, (p. 59.) Sed et vobis, Sacra- 
tissimi Imperatores, ad vindicandum et puniendum hoc malum necessitas 
imperatur, et hoc vobis Dei summi lege pracipitur, ut severitas vestra idolatrix 
facinus ommfarium persequatur. Audite et commendate Sanctis sensxbus Testiis 
quid de isto facinore Deus jubeat. Nee filio jubet parci, nee ftatri, et per amatara 
oonjugem qu« est in sinu tuo, gladium vindicem ducit : amicum quoque sublinu 



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CONVERSION. 185 

tine the Great ; calling on those holy Emperors, to seize all the re- 
maining property of the professors of Paganism, which his father had 
spared, and thus by reducing them to beggary, to starve them into 
salvation. 

" Take away, take away, in perfect security, (exclaims the disin- 
terested Christian orator.) O! most holy emperors, take away all the 
ornaments of their temples. Let the fire of the mint, or the flames of 
the mines, melt down their gods. Seize upon all their wealthy endow- 
ments, and turn them to your own use and property. And O! most 
sacred emperors, it is absolutely necessary for you to revenge and 
punish this evil. You are commanded by the law of the Most High 
God, to persecute all sorts of idolatry with the utmost severity : hear 
and commend to your own sacred understandings, what God himself 
commands. He commands you not to spare your son, or your brother; 
he bids you plunge the avenging knife even into the heart of your wife 
that sleeps in your bosom ; to persecute your dearest friend, with a 
sublime severity, and to arm your whole people against these sacri- 
legious Pagans, and tear them limb from limb. Yea! even whole 
cities, if you should find this guilt in them, must be cut off. O ! most 
holy emperors ! God promises you the reward of his mercy, upon con- 
dition of your thus acting. Do therefore what he commands— com* 
plete what he prescribes. n 

Nothing can be more orthodox and truly Christian than this oration. 
It presents us a faithful picture of the genius and character of 
primitive Christianity. The reader will perhaps think he has enough 
of it. The orator of the Areopagus, however he might have trans- 
gressed the laws of his country, transgressed not the fair sense of 
historic fact and license of oratorical figuration, when he said, " As- 
tonishing Paganism grew pale when she saw the blood-stained banner 
of the cross> and from her innocent hand, the flowery chaplets of the 
chaste Diana, and of the hospitable Jupiter, down dropt, and bloody 
treason triumphed over them V* 

We have, of the same age, a beautiful contrast to this spiritual ora- 
tion of Finnicius, in an epistle of the Pagan orator, Libanius, in which 
he discovers at the same time, what the tempers and dispositions of a 
Pagan were, towards those who left the faith of their ancestors, and 
embraced the new- fangled doctrines of Christianity. " Orion, (writes 

severitate persequitur, et ad diseerpenda sacrilegorum corpora, omnia populus 
armatur. Integris etiam civitatibus, si in isto fuerint iacinore deprehensae, 
decernuntur excidia. Misericordise suae vobis Sacratissimi Imperatores, Deus 
summus praemia pollicetur.— Facite itaque quod jubet, complete quod praecipit, 
(p. 63.) De Errbre Prof. Rel. 



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136 CONVERSION. 

he,) was my friend, when he was in prosperity, and now he is in afflic- 
tion, I have the same disposition towards him. If he thinks differ- 
ently from us, concerning the deity, be hurts himself, being deceived ; 
but it is not fit that his friends should therefore look upon him as an 
enemy."* Alas ! since one who had once been a minister of the gospel, 
but is now prisoner for his conscientious opposition to it, fell into afflic- 
tion and difference of opinion, concerning the deity, it was not only 
forgotten that he had once been a friend, but that he had ever been a 
fellow creature, a brother, or a son.f 

We have also still extant, the petition of Symmachus, the high 

?riest of Paganism, which he presented to the Emperors Valentinian, 
?heodosius and Arcadius, and for having delivered which, the Emperor 
Theodosius commanded the reverend orator to descend from the pulpit, 
and go immediately into exile— (Oakham !) 

But impious and unreasonable, as it was held to be in Christian 
ears, it was not worse than of a piece* with the extract which I here 
subjoin : — 

" Does not the religion of the Romans come under the protection of 
the Roman laws ? By what name shall we call an alienation of rights, 
which no laws or circumstances of things ever justified ? Freed men 
receive legacies, nor are even slaves deprived of the privilege of receiv- 
ing what is left to them by will — they are only the noble Vestals, and 
the attendants on the sacred rites upon which the public welfare 
depends, who are deprived of the privilege of receiving estates legally 
bequeathed to them. The Treasury detains the lands which were given 
to the Vestals and their officers by our dying progenitors. Do but 
consult your own generous minds, and you will not think that those 
things belong to the public, which you have already appropriated to 
the use of others. If length of time be of weight in matters of reli- 
gion, surely we ought to preserve that faith which has subsisted for so 
many ages, and to follow our parents, who have so happily followed 
theirs. We ask for no other state of religion than that which secured 
the empire to your blessed Father, and gave him the happiness of a 
legitimate issue to succeed him. That blessed prince now looks down 
from heaven, and beholds the tears of the priests, and considers the 
breach of their privileges as a reflection upon himself."^ 

The Holy Father and Bishop St. Ambrose, strenuously opposed this 
petition, and ingeniously argued from a text of scripture, which served 
to carry the point in M9 days, but which since has become apocryphal, 

* Epistle 730, p. 349, Lardnero, citantein loco quo. 

t SeeOrigines Christiana, 18th Letter in " The Lion," vol. 1. 

% Citante in loco, Lardnero. 



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CONVERSION. 137 

and consequently is no longer to be found; but this it was, " all the 
earth belongeth unto the righteous,* but to the infidels not one 
penny/' (obelus.) 

Lardner is anxious to vindicate the disinterestedness of St. Ambrose, 
who opposed himself to this unreasonable remonstrance of " these 
poor blind benighted Pagans ;" and puts in proof, the letter written to 
the Emperor Eugenius in the year 392, in which St. Ambrose declares, 
that " those revenues had not been taken away by his advice, only he 
had advised that when once they were taken away, they should not be 
given back again/' That's Christian all over! as much as to say, " I'll 
have nothing to do with thieving, but I'll go your halves !" 

The reader has only to turn bis eye to our table of the Ecclesiastical 
Revenues at this day, and he may solve as he shall please, the important 
question — whether, if these revenues were taken away from the church, 
and transferred to the professors of as false a religion as ever was on 
earth, our churchmen would not run after the revenues, and leave 
Christianity to the fate of Paganism. It is a remarkable fact that in 
the Corpus juris, or whole body of Roman law, notwithstanding all the 
dreadful stories of persecutions, and martyrdom, which Christians re- 
late that they have endured from the Pagan magistrates, there never 
was on record any law whatever, that had been enacted against Chris- 
tians—while there were and have been the most sanguinary laws 
enacted for the prosecution and eternal persecution of unbelievers. 

By a law of the Emperors Valentinius and Theodosius, whoever had 
been known to have apostatised from the Christian religion, was de- 
barred from the right of bequeathing property by will — nor was the 
Pagan religion effectually suppressed, till the profession of it was 
prohibited under the penalty of death. Thousands suffered that penalty) 
whom we are not allowed to consider as martyrs. It is well known, that 
the most holy and truly Christian Emperor Theodosius, put in practice 
the advice -of Julius Firmicius, upon the heterodox citizens of Thes- 
salonica, to the letter. He put the whole city to the sword, and 
" utterly destroyed every thing that breathed, even as the Lord God of 
Israel commanded." — An example which was followed in like manner, 
on the ever-memorable day of St. Bartholomew, August 24, 1572, 
when seventy thousand Protestants, subjects of the most Christian 
Charles IX., were butchered throughout France, at the instigation of 
his pious mother Catherine de Medicis. Mr. Higgins, a sincere be- 
liever, thus concludes his beautiful work : — " Look at Ireland, look at 
Spain, in short, look every where, and you will see the priests reeking 

* " The righteous :" who could that be but the orthodox clergy? 
18 s 



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M8 



JESCULAPIUS-JfiSUS CHRIST. 



with gore. They have converted and are converting, populous and 
happy nations into deserts, and have made our beautiful world into a 
slaughter-house, drenched with blood and tears." — Celtic Druids, 
p. 299. 



CHAPTER XX. 

JESCUIiAPIUS— JESUS CHRIST. 
JB8CULAFIUS* JESUS CHRIST. 

Mr. Addison's versification of the Mb. Pope's versification <*f the 

prophecies which foretold the life prophecies which foretold the life 

and actions of . JEsculapius, from and actions of Jesus Christ, from 

the Metamorphoses of Ovid. the prophecies of Isaiah. 

Once, as the sacred infant she sur- Ye nymphs of Solyma begin the song! 

veyed, O thou my voice inspire, 

The god was kindled in the raving That touched Isaiah's hallowed lips 

maid ;* with fire, 

And thus she uttered her prophetic Rapt into future times the bard begun 



tale, 

" Hail, great physician of the world 1 
all hail. 



* Ergo ubi fatidicos concepit mente 

furores 
Incaluitque Deo, quern clausum pec- 
tore habebat 
Aspicit infantem. Totique satuufer 

orbi 
Cresce puer dixit, tibi se mortal ia 

saepe 
Corpora debebunt: Animas tibi red- 

dere ademptas 
Fas erit. Idque semel Dls indignan* 

tibus ausus 
Posse dare hoc iterum flamma prohi- 

bebere avita 
Eque Deo corpus fies exangue; Deus- 

que 
Qui modo corpus eras, et bis tua fata Poetess, the daughter of Phanuel, 

novabis. of the tribe of Aser. She was of 

Ovid Met. Lib. 2, lin. 640. a great age, and had lived with a 



A virgin shall conceive, a virgin bear 

a son. 
Swift fly the years, and rise th' ex- 
pected morn— 
O spring to light, auspicious babe be 

born. 
He from thick films shall purge the 

visual ray, 
And on the sightless eyeball pour the 

day: 
lis he th* obstructed paths of sound 

shall clear, 
And bid new music charm th'unfolding 

ear; 
The dumb shall sing, the lame his 

crutch forego, 
And leap exulting like the bounding 

roe. 

' And there was one Anna, a pro- 



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£9CULAPITJS-JBSUS CHRIST. 



139 



Hail mighty infant, who in year* to 

corae, 
Shalt heal the nations, and defraud the 

tomb ! 
Swift be thy growth, thy triumphs un- 

confined, 
Make kingdoms thicker, and increase 

mankind. 
Thy daring art shall animate the dead, 
And draw the thunder on thy guilty 

head ; 
Then shalt thou die, but from the dark 

abode 
Shalt rise victorious, and be twice a 

god/' 

Reason at once rejects all ideas 
of prophecy, as being the most 
childish and foolish conceit that 
could possibly cross the mind ; a 
knowledge of future events being no 
more possible to the human mind, 
than tp fly in the air is to the 
body. We may be told sometimes 
of an extraordinary guess, as we 
may of a wonderful jump; but 
neither flight nor prophecy are at- 
tributes of man— and no rational 
man will consider the pretence tp 
such a faculty, in any other light, 
than as a certain evidence of im- 
posture, by whomsoever, or in 
what cause, soever advanced.* 



husband seven years from her vir- 
ginity. And she was a widow of 
about four-score and four years, 
which departed not from the tern* 
pie, but served God with fastings 
and prayers night and day. And 
she coming in at that instant, 
gave thanks likewise unto the 
-JLord, and spake of him to all them 
that looked for redemption in Is- 
rael, Luke iii. 36." 

This is one of the many pas- 
sages which the Unitarian editors 
of the improved version wish to 
have rejected, assigning as one 
among their several reasons against 
it, that "though found in all 
manuscripts and versions now ex- 
tant, it was introduced with a 
view to elevate the crucified Jesus 
to the dignity of the heroes and 
demigods of the heathen mytho- 
logy."~-p. 121, 



* A far more specific prediction than any that theology can pretend, occurs 
iri the Medea of Seneca, which seems in the age of Nero, to have foretold the 
nature discovery of America, by Christopher Columbus, an event which occurred 
not till 1400 years after the publication of the prophecy. This it is— 
" Venient annis ssecula seris, 
Quibus Oceanusvincula rerum. 
Laxat, et iugens pateat tellus 
Tethysque novos detegat orbes 
Nee sit terris Ultima Thule." 
" The times will come in late years, when ocean may relax the chain of things, 
and a vast continent may open; the sea may uncover new worlds, and Thule, 
cease to be the last of lands." 



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140 ^SCULAPIUS-JESITS CHRIST. 

The worship of JEsculapius was first established in Egypt* the fruit* 
ful parent of all varieties of superstition. The name is derived from 
the Oriental languages. Eusebius speaks of an Asclepios, or ^Bscu- 
lapius, an Egyptian, and a famous physician. He is well known as the 
God of the art of healing, and his Egyptian or Phoenician origin, leads 
us irresistibly to associate his name and character with that of the 
ancient Therapeuts, or Society of Healers, established in the vicinity of 
Alexandria, whose sacred writings Eusebius has ventured to acknow- 
ledge, were the first types of our four gospels. The miracles of heal- 
ing and of raising the dead, recorded in those scriptures are exactly 
such as these superstitions quacks would be likely to ascribe to the 
founder of their fraternity. 

" Being honoured as a god in Phoenecia and Egypt, his worship 
passed into Greece, and was established first at Epidaurus, a city of 
Peloponnesus, bordering on the sea; where probably some colonies 
first settled : a circumstance sufficient to induce the Greeks to give out 
that this god was a native of Greece.* — Bell's Pantheon, p. 27. 

Among the Greeks it was believed that the god Apollo himself had 
represented JEsculapius as his son by a voice from the oracle {ibid. :) 
and it is a striking coincidence of fact, if it be no more than a coinci- 
dence, that we find the Christian Father, Eusebius, attempting to 
prove the divinity of Jesus Christ, from an answer given by the same 
oracle ;* while the text of the Gospel of St Matthew iii. 17, written 
certainly much later than those answers, runs, " Lo, a voice from 
heaven, saying, This is my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased? 
By the mother side, JSsculapius was the son of Coronis, who had re- 
ceived the embraces of God, but for whom, unfortunately, the worship- 
pers of her son have forgotten to claim the honour of perpetual vir- 
ginity. To conceal her pregnancy from her parents, she went to 
Epidaurus, and was there delivered of a son, whom she exposed upon 
the Mount of Myrtles ;t wMen Aristhenes,} the goatherd,§ in search 
of a goat and a dog missing from his fold, discovered the child, whom 
he would have carried to his home, had he not, iu approaching to lift 
him up, perceived his head encircled in fiery raysj which made him to 
believe the child to be divine. The voice of fame soon published the 

* Dem. Evan, quoted, translated and commented on, in the author's Syn- 
tagma, p. 116. 
f Mount of Myrtles — why not Mount of Olives? 
J Arulhene$ — why not Joseph ? 
§ Goatherd—why not Shepherd? J 
|| Thus all Christian painters have depicted the infant Jesus. 



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JBSCULAPIU& 141 

birth of a miraculous infant ; upon which the people flocked from all 
quarters to behold this heaven-bora child.* 

It was believed that " <£sculapius was so expert in medicine, as not 
only to cure the sick, but even to raise the dead." Ovid says he did* 
this by Hyppolitus (and Julius says the same of Tyndarus); that Pluto 
cited him before the tribunal of Jupiter, and complained that hi* 
empire was considerably diminished, and in danger of becoming desolate* 
from the cures performed by JSsculapius ; so that Jupiter in wrath, 
slew him with a thunderbolt Within a short time after his death, he 
was deified, and received divine honours* His worship was first esta- 
blished at Epidauras, and soon after propagated throughout all Greece. 
The cockt and serpent were especially consecrated to him, and his 
divinity was recognised and honoured in the last words of the dying 
Socrates, " Remember that we owe a cock to JSsoulapius." At a time 
when the Romans were infested with the plague, having consulted their 
sacred books, they learned that, in order to be delivered from it, they 
were to go in quest of iBsculapius at Epidauras ; accordingly, an em* 
bassy was appointed of ten senators, at the head of whom was Quintus 
Ogulnius ; and the worship of iEsculapius was established at Rome, 
a. u. c. 462, that is, Before Christ, 288. But the most remarkable 
coincidence is, that the worship of this God continued with scarcely 
diminished splendour, even for several hundred years after the esta* 
blishment of Christianity. We have the best and most rationally 
attested account of a cure brought about by the influence of imagina- 
tion in connection with his name, as late as the year 485 a. ». 

Marinus, a scholar of the philosopher Proclus, A. d. 485, in his life 
of his master says, " I might relate very many theurgic operations of 
this blessed man ; one, out of innumerable, I shall mention ; and it is 
wonderful to hear. — Asclipigenia, daughter of Archiades and Plutar- 
cha, and wife of Theagenes, to whom we are much indebted, when she 
was yet but a young maiden, and lived with her parents, was seized 
with a grievous distemper, incurable by the physicians. All help from 
the physicians failing, as in other cases, so now in this also ; her father 

r Veiled in -flesh, the Godhead, He— 
• Heaven-born child.* — j Hail th* incarnate Deity I 
Equally applicable to j&scu- J Mild he lays his glory by, 
lapius as to Jesus, is the di« ] Born that man no more might die; 
vine doggerel annexed, Born to raise the sons of earth ; 

L Born to give them second birth ! 
f The serpent is prime agent in the story of human redemption; and the cock 
really bears a very important character in the Gospel, in rebuking Petel for curs- 
ing and swearing. 



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W JSSCVlkVlUS. 

eppBed to the, sheet-anchor, that is, to the philosopher, 1x5 few £ood 
Saviour,* earnestly entreating him to pray for his daughter, whose con- 
dition was not unknown to him. He therefore, taking with him Peri- 
cles of Lydia, who was also a philosopher and worthy of that name,f 
.Went to the temple of JSscukpius, intending to pray for the sick young 
woman to- the god ; for the city (Athens) was at that time blessed in 
him, and still enjoyed the undemolished temple of Thk Saviour. Bat 
while he was, praying according to the ancient form J, a sudden change 
appeared in the damsel, and she immediately became convalescent ; for 
The Savioub, as being God, easily healed her." 

With respect to the miracles ascribed to JEsculapius, and continuing 
to be performed for so many ages by the efficacy of faith in his name, 
and in answer to prayers offered up in his temple; the power and in- 
fluence of imagination, in producing changes in the animal economy 
to an indefinite extent, is well known to physicians ; and, without in- 
tending any injurious imposture, the most benevolent and intelligent 
medical men at this day avail themselves of the patient's superstition, 
to aid and second the operations of medicine. A strongly excited 
expectation of relief will often produce such an improved tone of mus- 
cular action, and such a more vigorous flow of the animal spirits, as 
will be sufficient to throw off the obstructions in which the disease 
originated, and thus effect many extraordinary and otherwise unac- * 
countable cutes. A medical friend once succeeded in curing a poor 
man of chronic rheumatism, after he had followed the prescriptions of 
the ablest physicians without receiving the least benefit, by working 
upon his imagination to make sure of receiving a cure, by taking 
seven tea-spoonfuls of the decoction of a brickbat that should be 

"* The good Saviour, which was the express tide of iEsculapius, is given by 
Eusehius, in the mouth of his febricaled personage, Abgarus, tp the no less 
fabricated Jesus : 

A0y*poj rOTrttpxw li,havnf Intra awrnpt ayaSw ccvafyomvri «r rare* Ifpo?oXvp«f 
gatpw. — Lib. 1, c. 13, lit. D. EccL Hist. "Abgarus, toparch of Edessa, to 
Jesus, the good Saviour, who hath shone forth in Jerusalem — greeting ! 

f I preserve so much of the original text as is essential to the proof of the 
matter before us :— 

A>»u mj to aaKXnvuw flrpoowfopiyo; tw 0iw vwsp th? xa^yam;. Kau yap 
nvrvx u rum t) toXij toti xou «^w er* ewropSbjToy to t« Swrapo? »spoy> Eu^ofbtm 
»t»r« Toy *p%«MOT*poy rpo**oy, a$po« psrctfkXn vipt mv xoptiv E^cuytro, xou peurrun 
t%ou$fn$ sy*yysTo« Vu» yap Swrup vote Geo; 1000,10 —Quoted in Lardner, 
vol. 4, p. 410. 

X The ancient form, for instance ; " Our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be 
thy name; thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven," 
&c. 



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jGSCCLAVtUB. M 

found in a church-yard, the brickbat to be boiled for seven hour*, in 
seven quarts of water; the essential conditions of the miracle being 
that its efficacy was not to be doubted; and the whole process to be 
kept an inviolable secret This prescription he affected to translate 
out of the spider-leg text of a Greek folio* The cure was perfect* 
The primitive Christians were content never to call in question the 
miracles pretended by their Pagan adversaries, so they could get their 
own similar pretensions recognised. Their argument was one that 
-was well contrived to evade all possibility of being determined : the 
Pagan miracles were wrought by the power of daemons, while theirs 
-were to be ascribed to the True God. 

Justin Martyr, in his Apology for the Christian Religion, addressed 
to the emperor Hadrian, seems to seek rather an excuse for the Christian 
miracles, than to consider them as resting on any grounds of evidence : 
— " As to our Jesus curing the lame, and the paralytic, and such as 
were cripples from their birth, this is little more than what you say of 
your -flSsculapius."* ^ 

" In the performance of their miracles," says Dr. Conyers Middleton, 
" the primitive Christians were always charged with fraud and impos- 
ture by their adversaries. Lucian tells us, that whenever any crafty jug- 
gler, expert in his trade, and who knew how to make a right use of 
things, went over to the„Christians, he was sure to grow rich imme- 
diately by making a prey of their simplicity ; and Celsus represents all 
the Christian wonder-workers as mere vagabonds and common cheats, 
who rambled about to play their tricks at fairs and markets, not in the 
circles of the wiser and better sort, (for among such they never ven- 
tured to appear,) but whenever they observed a set of raw young fel- 
lows, slaves or fools, there they took care to intrude themselves, and to 
display their arts.' — Free Inquiry, p. 144. 

The reader has only to consult the 1st and 2d chapters of the 1st 
Epistle to the Corinthians, and he will see that this principle of play- 
ing off upon the credulity of the weakest and most ignorant of man- 
kind is expressly avowed by the great Apostle of the Gentiles — " Christ 
crucified? to the Jews, " a stumbling block," as contrary to all evi- 
dence of fact ; " and to the Greeks, foolishness," as revolting to reason. 
The principle result, however, of this resemblance is, the evidence it 
affords that the terms or epithets of " Oub Saviour" — the Saviour 
being God, were the usual designations of the god JEsculapius ;f and 
that miracles of healing and resurrection from the dead, were the evi- 

* See the Chapter on'Justin Martyr, in this Diegesis. 
t Both Bacchus and Jupiter also, was distinguished by the epithet Ova 
Saviour. Sir John Marsham had a coin of the Thasians onj which was the 



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144 HERCULES. 

denee of hit divinity, for ages before similar pretences were advanced 
for Jesus of Nazareth. " Strabo informs us, that the temples of JEscu- 
lapios were constantly filled with the sick, imploring the help of God ; 
and that they had tables hanging around them, in which all the mira- 
culous cures were described. There is a remarkable fragment of one 
of these tables still extant, and exhibited by Grater in his collection, 
as it was found in the ruins of JEsculapius's temple, in the island of 
the Tyber in Rome ; which gives an account of two blind men restored 
to sight by iEsculapius, in the open view, and with the loud acclama- 
tions of the people acknowledging the manifest power of the god." — 
Middleton's Free Inquiry, p. 78. Could such a document be produced 
to authenticate any one of the miracles ascribed to Jesus, what would 
become of the cause of infidelity ? 



CHAPTER XXI. 



HEHCULE8— JS8U8 CHRIST. 



Ob Alcides, was the son of God by Alcmena, wife of Amphy trion, king 
of Thebes, and is said to have been born in that city, 1280 years be- 
fore the Christian era. Hercules was pointed out by the ancients as their 
great exemplar of virtue. It was affirmed by some, that he voluntarily 
engaged in his great labours. The whole of his life appears to have 
been devoted to the good of mankind. " The writers who treat of his 
adventures, and of the antiquities relating to them," says Mr. Spence, 
" have generally fallen into a great deal' of confusion, so far, that I 
scarcely know any one of them that has perfectly well settled which 
were his twelve labours. To avoid felling into the same confusion, one 
may divide all his adventures into three classes. In the first class, I 
should place such as are previous to his twelve celebrated labours ; 

" In the second, those twelve labours themselves, which he was 
obliged to do by the fatality of his birth ; 

" And in the third, any supernumerary exploits. 

" His first exploit was that of strangling two serpents sent to destroy 

inscription H|ctxXi«j EwTupoj, of Hercules the Saviour.— Bryant's Annot. 
vol. 2. p. 400. 195. The name of Christ, as we have seen (Definition, p. 7,) 
was ridiculously common, and extended even to every individual of the Jewish 
race:— 

linn bfvmhn vrwaa van *?k 
" Touch not my Christs, and Jo my fortune-tellers no harm. 19 — Psalm cv. 14. 



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HERCULES. 145 

him in his cradle. This he seems to have performed, according to 
some accounts of it, when he was not above half an hour old. But 
what is still more extraordinary is, that there are exploits supposed to 
have been performed by Hercules, even before Alcmena brought him 
into the world." 

Thus far Spence, in his Polgmetis, dial. 9. p. 1 145. Adding in a 
note, " This, perhaps, is one of the most mysterious points in all 
the mythology of the ancients. Though Hercules was born not long 
before the Trojan war* they make him assist the gods in conquering the 
rebel giants {Virgil vJEneid, 8, line 298) ; and some of them talk of an 
oracle or tradition in heaven, that the gods could never conquer them, 
without the assistance of a man." 

Upon which, the orthodox Parkhurst, in his Hebrew Lexicon,* asks, 
with indignation, " Can any man seriously believe, that so excellent a 
scholar as Mr. Spence was, could not easily have accounted for what 
he represents as being so very mysterious ? Will not I Pet. i. 20.1* 
compared with Hag, ii. 7 J clear the whole difficulty, only recollecting 
that Hercules might be the name of several mere men, as well as the 
title of the future Saviour ? And .did not the truth here glare so 
strongly on our author's, eyes* that he was afraid to trust his reader 
with it in the text, and so put it into a note for fear it should spoil his 
jests." 

" It is well known,' 9 continues Parkhurst, " that by Hercules, in the 
physical mythology of the heathens, was meant, the Sun, or solar light, 
and his twelve famous labours have been referred to the sun's passing 
through the twelve zodiacal signs ; and this, perhaps^ not without some 
foundation. But the labours of Hercules seem to have had a still 
higher view, and to have been originally designed as emblematic memo- 
rials of what the real Son, of God and Saviour of the world was to do 
and suffer for our sake&— Noo-w» deXxrupia ravr* noful^m — " Bringing all 
lenitives of our diseases," as the Orphic hymn speaks of Hercules."§ 

Thus we see that Christian divines, according to their cue or drift, 
either endeavour to conceal or else boast of the resemblance between 
the Christian and Pagan mythology* At one time, or with one set of 

♦P.520. 

t Who vet ily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but was 
manifest in these last times for you, 

\ And the Desire of all nations shall come, 

§ See Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon, under the word o*bjd Protectors, from 
the root w, strength at vigour, p. 520. But what is this whole strain of argu- 
ment, but the open and avowed Eclectic Philosophy, and a virtual admission 
that Christianity and Paganism are perfectly synonymous? 

19 t 



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146 HERCULES. 

Christian-evidence writers, the very idea of naming Christ and Hercules 
together is held as the most frightful impiety : heaven and hell are not 
farther asunder: with another set, equally orthodox, but driving at a 
different tact of argument, it is Satan himself; who hath blinded our 
eyes, to prevent the light of truth shining upon us, if we cannot see 
that Hercules and Jesus Christ are one and the same identical person- 
age; that the labours of the one were the miracles of the other ; and 
that the most mysterious and abstruse doctrines of the New Testament 
were but the realization of the emblematical types of the ancient Pa- 
ganism. Son of God, and Sayioub of the world, were forms of 
expression with which the ear of heathenism was familiar, for ages be- 
fore it was pretended that the son of Jehovah and Mary had a better 
claim to be addressed by those titles, than the son of Jupiter and 
Alcmena. 

There was, however, a consistency in the conduct of the worshippers 
of the earlier claimant, and a conformity of their practice to their pro- 
fession, which we shall look for in vain among the adorers of the later 
aspirant. Hercules was expressly and professedly worshipped by the 
ancient Latins, under the name of Drvus Fronrs ; that is, the guar- 
antee or protector of faith promised or sworn. They had a custom of 
calling this deity to witness, by a sort of oath conceived in these 
terms — " Me Divus Fidius /" that is, So help me the God Fiditts ! or 
Hercules. But with all due respect to the high authority I quote, 
rather than incur the censure of the divines of the Hutchinsonian 
school, of resisting the light that glares upon me, I should take the 
original form of the ancient oath to have been " Me Deu* Fitius F 
the filling up of which formulary, with the words ita adjuvet, make the 
sense complete, " So help me God the Son 1" The form of oath used in 
our universities at this day is, " Ita me Deus adjuvet et eancta ejus 
eoangeliaj" So help me God and his holy Gospels! The turning 
the word Jilius into Fidius, and inventing a god, or an epitheton of that 
name, seems like a struggle to evade the evident sense, especially since 
we know that in the hurried and gabbling way in which the ancient 
oath was administered, the whole sentence was pronounced but as two 
words, Medius Fidius ; and certainly it would be ridiculous to make a 
God, or the epithet of a God, of the word Medius: and why might not 
Hercules be honoured with the title of God the Son, to distinguish him 
from Jupiter, or God the Father, as by his human nature standing in a 
nearer relation to mankind than the paternal deity, and the fitter to be 
appealed to as a mediator in human transactions ; especially seeing 
that he was known and recognized under the exactly similar designation 
of the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world ? 



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HBRCDLBS. W 

It is, indeed, one of the most carious extravagancies of all that is 
extravagant in Christian faith and practice, that the custom of adminis- 
tering oaths should be retained in Christian courts of judicature, in spite 
of the express and reiterated prohibitions of swearing contained by 
luckless oversight in the very book on which the oath is taken. Our 
Judge Blackstone, well aware how ill the Christian text would serve his 
purpose, passes over the words of Jesus Christ, " 1 say unto you, swear 
not at all" (Matt. v. 34); and those of his holy Apostle St. James, 
" But above all things, my brethren, swear not" (James v. 12) ; and 
quotes the text of the Pagan, Cicero :— 

" Who denies that these opinions are useful, when he observes how 
many things are certified upon oath; of what safety are the religious 
obligations of covenants, how many persons are restrained from crime 
by the fear of divine punishment, and how holy is the society of citizen- 
ship, from the belief of the presence of the immortal gods, as well with 
the judges as with the witnesses ?" # 

" It has indeed been remarked by the most eminent writers of the 
Roman history, that the superstition of that people had a great in- 
fluence in keeping them in subordination and allegiance. It is more 
particularly observed, that in no other nation was the solemn obliga- 
tion of an oath treated with such respect, and fulfilled with such a 
religious circumspection, and such an inviolable fidelity." Such is the 
substance of a note of a Christian translator of Mosheim, in opposition 
to a remark of his text, that the Roman superstition was defective in 
this point. — (Cent. 4, part 1.) 

A note to similar effect occurs in the Christian Evanson's work on 
the Dissonance of the four Gospels, p. 83. "I was many years ago 
assured by an intimate friend, and an intelligent worthy man, who had 
traded largely both in the northern parts of Africa and in many dif- 
ferent countries of Europe, that he was never once deceived in con- 
fiding in the honour and integrity of a Mahomedan; but that through 
the perfidy and dishonesty of some of those he dealt with, he had been 
defrauded and injured in every nation of professed Christians."! 

The gaoler of the prison in which I am at the time of writing this, in 



* Utiles esse opiniones has, quis negat, cum intelligat quam multa firmentur 
jurejurando; quants salutis sint fcederum religtones, quam multos divini 
supplicii metus ascelere revocarit, quamque sancta sit societas civiura inter ipsos, 
Diis immortalibus interpositis turn judicious turn testibus.— » De Legibus, 
lib. 2, 7. 

f There are no Quakers among them ; and there can be no villainy where 
Quakers are not. 



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148 ADONffi. 

the seventh month of an unjust captivity incurred by the conscientious 
and honourable maintenance of my sincere convictions, informs me, 
that during bis own long residence in Malta, and constant course of 
commercial transactions with the professors of the Mahomedan creed, 
He never heard of an unpaid debt, or a violated obligation ; and that it 
is an usual mode of traffic in the market-towns throughout Turkey, 
for the farmers and heaters to leave their fowls, eggs and butter, &c. 
in baskets, with the prices affixed, and to return in the evening in 
perfect security of finding the article as they left it, or the exact price 
deposited in the place of just so much of it as had found a purchaser. 

" Were a wise man," says Bishop Kidder, " to choose his religion by 
the lives of those who profess it, perhaps Christianity would be the last 
religion he would choose." Christianity, then, has no pretence to evi- 
dence on the score of any moral effects it has produced in the world. 



CHAPTER XXII. 



ADONIS— JESU8 CHRIST. 



The Jews had a superstition of not uttering the incommunicable name 
of God, nrr- that is, Yahou, or Jackhou ; or, as it frequently occurs, 
in one syllable"* — Jao, or Jack;* which, with more reverence than 
reason, is pronounced Juh ! as the tetragrammaton, or word of four 
letters, which at this day adorns our Christian temples is called Jehovah. 

From this divine name n\ says Parkhurst, the ancient Greeks had 
their i n in their invocations of the gods, more particularly of their god 
Apollo, i. e. The Light* And hence these two letters, forming the 
name Jah 9 written after the oriental manner from right to left, were 
inscribed over the great door of the temple of Apollo at Delphi 

n* is several times joined with the name nvr 9 which seems to indicate 
that they are distinct names for the same deity, and not the one the 

• The nearest approach to the exact pronunciation of this sacred word 
will be produced by suspending the action of all the organs of articulation, and 
making only that convulsive heave of the larynx, by which the bronchal vessels dis- 
charge the accumulated phlegm ; itis enunciated with the most eloquent propriety in 
the act of vomiting, and perhaps on this account has been called the unutterable 
name. — Consult Rabbi Ben Herschel, and his beard ! The God Jehovah, the 
most hideous pf tlie whole mythology, was well known to the Gentiles ; he was 
the Jovv of the ancient Tuscans, and Latinized into the Janus of the Romans. 



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ADONIS. 149 

mere abbreviation of the other. The rays of light or glory within a 
circle or ring, of which the tetragrammaton, or four-lettered word, is 
exhibited in our Christian temples, are a demonstration that the same 
deity is intended by the Christian Jehovah as by the Pagan Jah (that is* 
Apollo), whose name of two letters was in like manner encircled with 
rays of glory. 

The Pagans, indeed, seem more rigidly to have adhered to the text or 
injunctions of those Syrio-Phcenician odes which have been consecrated 
by Christian Piety, under the name of the Psalms of David; and which 
formed a material part of their idolatrous liturgies, than their Chris-* 
tian plagiarists, who have retained the use of them in a never-inter- 
rupted succession from their times. 

We read in the original, the hundred times repeated commands, 
rr rVtfi — Ellell-lu-iah ! praise ye Jack! n» rm pnamn — Behold! bless 
ye Jack! . 

tfoys "ww jt3 rro"wzi Mib 'bo vsv tioj trrnio tw 
— rpri rinyh *3 mrr d*sk *t\r *3 tush 

Sing ye to the gods ! Chant ye his name ! Exalt him who rideth in 
the heavens, by his name Jack, and leap for joy before his face ! For 
the Lord hath a long nose, and his mercy endure th for ever. 

It is admitted, however, on all hands, that the proper pronunciation 
of the tetragrammaton which we call Jehovah, and its synonyme Jah, 
is entirely lost. Nor can it be denied, that the Hebrew points ordi- 
narily annexed to the consonants of those words, are not the natural 
points belonging thereto, nor indicative of pronunciation ; but are the 
vowel points belonging to the words Adonai and Elohim, — to warn 
the reader, that instead of the word Jehovah, which the Jews were 
forbidden to pronounce, and the pronunciation of which had been long 
unknown to them, they are always to read Adonai or Adonis.* 

Hence we find that frequently where the common printed copies 
read *rw, many of Dr. Kennicott's codices have mrr. And hence, says 
Dr. Parkhurst, whose orthodoxy of Christian faith admits not a sus- 
picion — hence the idol Adonis had his namef 

The reader will I hope, do himself the justice to observe, that 
throughout this Diegesis, no merely fanciful or conjectural interpre- 

• See the Oxford Encyclopaedia, under the head AdonUtt; and my own fur- 
ther investigations of this curious subject, in my Syntagma of the Evidences of 
the Christian religion, published during the earlier months of my still- continuing 
unjust imprisonment, for the conscientious exposure of the errors and ignorance 
on Which that religion is founded, p. 96. 

f Parkhurst's Hebrew Lexicon, under the head n 3. 



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150 ADONIS. 

tations are admitted, and no new lights struck out from ingenious ety- 
mologies: he is here presented with the calm dispassionate evidence of 
fact, and when those facts are most pregnant of conclusions adverse to 
Christianity, they are invariably adduced in the words and on the 
authority of Christians themselves, whose disinterestedness, at least, in 
yielding admissions of this character, is no more to be questioned, than 
their learning and piety to be surpassed. 

The great source of difficulty aud mistake in tracing the identity of 
the parent figment through the multifarious forms of the* ancient 
idolatry seems to arise from the change of epithets and names, while 
yet it is but one, and the same deity and demi-god who is meant under 
a hundred designations. Thus, the names under which the Sun has 
been the real and only intended object of divine worship, have been as 
various and as many as the nations of the earth on which his light has 
shone. And as various are the allegories and fictions of his passing 
through the zodiacal sign of the Virgin, which, of course, would re- 
main a virgin still ; his descending into the lower parts of the earth ; 
his rising again from the dead; his ascending into heaven, his opening 
the kingdom of heaven to all believers; his casting his bright beams of 
light through twelve months, or Apostles, one of whom (February — 
Judas) lost a day, and by transgression (or skipping over) "fell, that 
he might go to his own place" (Acts i. 25); "his preaching the 
acceptable year of the Lord? (Luke iv. 9). By all which metaphorical 
personifications, were typified the natural history or circumstances 
observable in the Sun's progress through the twelve months which con- 
stitute the natural year. 

The Jews in vain endeavour to disguise the fact, that they also were 
Sun worshippers. We find, from their own sacred books, that their 
Solomon, after having built a temple to Jehovah, " did build also an 
high place for w»w Chemosh (that is, the Sun), the abomination of 
Moaby in the hill thai is before Jerusalem? (1 Kings, xi. 1); and so 
late as to the reign of Josiah, successive kings of Judah u had dedicated 
horses to the Sun; and the chariots of the Sun were at the entering in 
of the House of the Lord ?"— (2 Kings xxii. 11.) 

The prophet Malachi expressly speaks of Christ, under the same 
unaltered name of Chemosh, the abomination of the Moabites — n?nv vdv 
-—Chapter iii, verse 4, or iv. 2. Which being, by our evangelical 
reformers, very conveniently translated the Sun of Righteousness? of 
course could refer to nothing else than Jesus Christ, and so conceals the 
idolatry, while it conveys the piety. 

: y^ni? or> T** wk "P ^o^ aw •pw 1 ' ?w ow * 



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ADONIS. 151 

The same deity, however, under his name Adonis, without any 
change but that of the various pronouns, suffices to indicate my Adon, 
our Adon, &c~ is the undisguised idol who is addressed innumerable 
times throughout the book of Psalms, under that name, and to whose 
honour, in common with that of Jehovah, they were composed and 
dedicated. The 1 10th Psalm, of which the first verse rendered into 
English, is, " The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, 
until J make thine enemy thy footstool,"* should have been rendered, 
" Yahou said unto Adonis! 9 The two idols were worshipped in the 
same house of the Lord, which was at Jerusalem : Yahou, or Jack, sat 
on the lid of a box, ridiculously called the ilasterion, or mercy-seat ; 
while Adonis seems to have occupied the vestibule, or entering in of 
the house of the Lord. The rest of the Psalm is a dialogue, in which 
Jao, or Jack, proposes terms of alliance between himself and Adonis, 
and engages to join him in the slaughter of their enemies. The prefer- 
ence of the Jews for Adonis, who was distinguished for his personal 
beauty above the cloven-footed and long-nosed Jehovahf has induced 
them to this day, not only to read the name Adon, wherever it occurs, 
bnt entirely to banish the recollection of Jao altogether. They substi- 
tute the name Adon in every instance where our translators have put 
Jehovah, or the Lord ; so that in the reading of those to whom these 
lively oracles were committed, it is not Jehovah, but the Phoenician 
deity Adonis, who is the God of the Old Testament. 

Jehovah then, had more than cause enough for jealousy against the 
encroachments of Adonis, and in one most striking instance, the 
worship of this idol, under his name Tammuz, is denounced as an 
atrocious abomination. Then he brought me to the door of the gate of 
the Lord's house, which was towards the north, and behold there sat 
women weeping for Tammuz.— (Ezekiel viii. 14.) 

Here Jerome interprets pan Tammuz, by Adonis, who, he observes, 
is, in Hebrew and Syriac, called Adonis. 

" I find myself obliged, (says the pious author of the Greek and 
Hebrew Lexicons,) to refer Tammuz as well as the Greek and Roman 
Hercules, to that class of idols, which was originally designed to repre- 
sent the promised Saviour, the Desire of all nations. His other name, 
ddonis, is almost the very Hebrew wm or our Lord, a well-known title 
of Christ." 

* The Hebrew has no adjectives : Sun of Righteousneu is their idiom for the 
Righteous Sun. 

t See the plate of him in Parkhurst, and his convincing arguments in proof 
that the beast with four faces and four wings, standing like a cock upon a hco- 
nxKti on one leg, " must be referred to Jehovah only," under the head a-o 
340-4. 



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RS ADONIS. 

Such are the words of the ingenious, most learned, and orthodox 
Parkhurst, who proceeds to exhibit this resemblance of Adonis and 
Christ, by subjoining, with acknowledgements to his authorities Spear- 
man and Godwyn, a passage from Julius Firmieius+ which in my earlier 
writings I was content to quote, as he had done, at second-hand. The 
retirement and leisure however which my Christian persecutors have 
forced upon me, and the attentions of my unbelieving friends, have 
enabled me to study the very rare and curious original itself. It is an 
oration or address of Julius Firmicius delivered to the Emperors Con- 
stats and Constantius ; the object of which was to induce those pious 
princes to seize the property of their Pagan subjects, and apply it to 
Christian uses — than which, of course, nothing could have been more 
orthodox. After forty-five pages of abuse heaped on the ancient Pagans 
for their egregious forms of idolatry, in which by a most curious 
mystical interpretation of their ceremonies, he discovers Christ to have 
been represented by them all, — he adds, *" Let us propose another 
symbol, that by an effort of cogitation, their wickedness may be re^ 
vealed, of which we must relate the whole process in order that it may 
be manifest to all, that the law of the divine appointment hath been 
corrupted by the devil's perverse imitation. On a certain night (while 
the ceremony of the Adonia, or religious rites in honour of Adonis 
lasted) an image was laid out upon a bed, and bewailed in doleful 
ditties. After they had satiated themselves with fictitious lamentations, 
light was brought in ; then the mouths of all the mourners were 
annointed by the priest, upon which the priest, with a gentle murmur, 
whispered — 

Trust ye, saints, your God restored, 

Trust ye, in your risen Lord; 

For the pains which he endured 

Our salvation have procured. 

* Aliud etiam symbolum proponamus, ut conamine cogitationis, scelera 
revelentur, cujus totus ordo dicendus est, ut apud omnes constet divinae dis- 
positionis legem, perversa Diaboli imitatione corruptam. Nocte quadam 
simulacrum in lectica supinum ponitur, et per numeros digestis fletibus plan- 
gitur. Deinde cum se ficta iamentatione satiaverint, lumen infertur. Tunc 
a Sacerdote omnium qui flebant, fauces unguntur, quibus perunctis, sacerdos 
lento murmure susurrat : — 

©appelTE pvoTCU tu $e» awwryMB 

Eutcu yap njuiv ex grovu» owrTjjxet. 
Literally, " Trust ye communicants ; the God having been saved, there shall 
be to us out of pains, salvation." Godwyn, who seems not to have discovered 
the metre of the original, renders it " Trust ye in God, for out of pains, salvation 
is come to us." 



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AbONIS. ]» 

u Upon wMch their sorrow was turned into joy, and the Image Was 
taken, as it were out of its sepulchre." These latter words, though 
their sense is' evidently* implied, have no direct authority in the original, 
bat seem to be a scholium of Mr. Spearman. Firmlcius, in his tide of 
eloquence, leaves his conclusion elliptical; and breaks aWay into in- 
dignant objurgation of the priest who officiated in those heathen mys- 
teries; which, he admitted, resembled the Christian sacrament in honour 
of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, so closely, that there was ' 
really' no difference between them, except* that no sufficient proof had 
been given to the world of the resurrection of Adonis, and no divine 
oracle hdd bbrn'e witness to his resurrection, nor had he shown himself 
alive after hfs death to those who were concerned to have assurance of 
the met, that they might' believe. The divine oracle (be it observed;) 
which had borne witness to tne resurrection of x Christ; but which it 
it seems had vouchsafed no' such honourable testimony to the resurrec- 
tion of Adonis,' was none' other than theanswetof the God Apollo, at 
Delphbs ; which this author derives from Porphyry's books on th* Pky* 
lotophy of Oracles ; add which : Eusebius* has condescended to quote, 
as furnishing one of the most convincing proofs that eould be adduced 
from the admission of an adversary of the resurrection of Ohriskf 

" Bdt thou, at least," says Eusebius, " listen to thine own Gods, to 
thy oracular' deities themselves*' who have borne witness, and ascribe to 
our Saviour; not' imposture, but piety and wisdom, and ascent into 
heaven." Quoted in the Author's Syntagma, p. 1 16. This was vastly 
obliging and liberal of the God Apollo ; only, it happens awkwardly 
enough, that the whole work (consisting of several books) ascribed to 
Porphyry, in whibh this and other admissions equally honourable to the 
evidences J of the Christian relijjidn, are made, was pot writtenby Por- 
phyry, btytis altogether the pious foifcery of Christian hands ; who have 
kindly fathered the great philosopher with admissions, which as he 
would ^certainly nteverhaVe'toade them himself, they have very charita- 
tably made fotf hini. 

But toot alone the vety' name Adbn, or'Adbnai, nor the particular 



♦Dei tui mors nota est; vita non compact; nee de resurreetione ejus 
dt?inum aliquando respondit oraculum, nee hominibus se post mortem ut 
sibi crederetur/ osteridrt^ nulla huiife operis docuitienta ptomisit, nee se hoc 
facturum esse praeedentibUs monstratit etemplis. — D« Errore prof. lUlig. 
p. 45. 

f Firmicius, Quotes this Christian forgery under' the titlfe ITipi t*$ wXoytm 
$iXan>$^.~Eus&his avails himself of it,' as Hip* Xoyww tyywoQutf. — Mao 
knight-and L Doddridge, strove mightily to enlist it irtto the service of the Church 
Militant; but it would not do. 

20 v 



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15* ADONIS. 

mower in which that God was worshipped, occurring as frequently as 
the name . Jehovah, and by the Jews themselves constantly main- 
tained to be the sense of that name, and proper to be used rather than, 
and instead of it ; bat the distinctive attributes of Adonis, the pecu- 
liarly characteristical epithets and designations by which that idol was 
identified from all others, prove beyond the possibility of doubt, that 
the Jews wer* worshippers of the self-same Adonis, adored by their 
Phoenician, neighbours, Adonis was distinguished for his personal 
beauty. We find, entire odes or psalms in praise of his beauty,* and his 
characteristic epithet of The Beauty or Holiness used interchange- 
ably, instead of his name. " He appointed singers unto the Lord* and 
that should praise The Bsavty qe Howjtos."-*- 2,Chton. xju 21. 

" The Devil/' says Firmicius, "has bis Christs/'t of which he affects 
not to deny that this Adonis was one. But one of the strongest sen- 
sible pnoofs of the difference between, the false Christs and the true one, 
which this author could, adduce, was. that the, ointment with which the 
Pagan; priests annointed the lips of the mystics,, or initiated in the 
Aclonidi or sacrament of our Lard Adonis, was. wholly different from 
the unguenfym wwortqle .which God the Father gave to his only Son, J 
and which the Son. bestows on all those who believe in the divine majesty 
of his. name : for. Christ's ointment, he would have us to know, is " oi 
an immortal composition, and mixed up with, the spiritual scents of 
paints of myrrh, aloes, and cassia, out of ivory palaces ;" whereas the 
Pagan ointment was, I dare say, little betyer than cart-grease. — Nobody 
need know any more about Vir. Clams Julius Firmicius Maternus. 

The Apqhia were solemn feasts in honour of Venus, and in memory 
of her beloved son Adonis.. Venus, as sprung from the sea, Mare, 
could not be more honourably distinguished. than by her epithet Maria; 
Adonai is literally Our Lord: so that these solemn feasts, without any 
change or substitution of names, were unquestionably celebrated to the 
honour of Mary and her son, Our, Loan ; to whomsoever else those 
names may have in later ages been applied. They were observed by the 
Greeks, Phoenicians, Lycians, Syrians, Egyptians, and indeed, by 
almost all the nations of the then known world. It is universally 
agreed, that it is to these ceremonies that the Jewish God refers in the 

thvkvrkH taro, p bp Y<rwTOijn jam dtk *aao nw, • 
Thou art handsome beyond the sons of Adam, lave is diffused in thy lip*> 

for the sake of which, God is enamoured of thee for ever.— Psalm 45. 
fHabet eigo Diabolus Ghrislos suos, p. 46. 
J Aliud est unguentum. quod Qeu$ paler unico tradidit fitio,&c. p. 46.— See 

in its place, under the name Christ, what serious though slippery arguments the 

Fathers build on ointment or pomatum. 



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ADONIS. 155 

8th chapter of Bzekiel, where they **e denounced as an abomination ; 
we fittd by inference, an honourable apology for the Jewish nation, who, 
48 a people, have through so many ages, refused to embrace a religion, 
which in so many particulars, and even in the continuance of the same 
Mines, has lost ail possibility of being distinguished in their appre- 
hension from "the abomination of the Sidonians" The festival of 
the Adonia was still observed at Alexandria, the cradle of the Chris- 
tian religion, in the time of St Cyril; and at that Antioch, where the 
disciples were first called Christians, (Acts xi. 26,) even as late as the 
time of the emperor Julian, commonly called the Apostate; " whose 
arrival there during the solemnity was taken for an ill omen,*- — BelFo 
Pantheon. This is surely a curious admission of our Christian myco- 
logists. Let the reader ask himself, and answer as he may the ques- 
tions emergent from this state of the Christian evidences— 1. What 
argument can be drawn 'from the wonderful propagation of the Gospel, 
whan in the city where it was at first most successfully preached, and 
where the disciples were first called Christians, it had not, even in the 
fourth century, abolished the Pagan and idolatrous festival of the 
Adonia?— 2. And wherefore should the arrival of the emperor Julian 
(a known apostate from the Christian religion, and a zealous patron of 
Paganism), during the celebration of the Adonia, have been considered 
as an ill omen, but that the Adonia had come to be considered as en- 
tirely a Christian festival ? — 3. And at what time, or whether ever, 
the festival of the Adonia was distinctly abolished, and that of the 
Christian Easter established upon its overthrow ? 

For the solution of these most important enquiries, we hold up the 
light of the admissions of ecclesiastical historians. It must ever be 
borne in mind, that the Christians of the second, third, and fourth 
centuries industriously laboured to give their religion the nearest possi- 
ble resemblance to the ancient Paganism ; and confessedly adopted the 
liturgies, rites, ceremonies, and terms of heathenism ; making it their 
boast that the Pagan religion, properly explained, really was nothing 
else than Christianity ; that the best and wisest of its professors in all 
ages had been Christians all along ; that Christianity was but a name 
more recently acquired to a religion which had previously existed, and 
had been known to the Greek philosophers, to Plato, Socrates, and 
Heraclitus ; and that " if the writings of Cicero had been read as they 
ought to have been, there would have been no occasion for the Chris- 
tian Scriptures." Nor did some of them who maintained that Jesus 
Christhad a real existence, hesitate to ascribe to him a work in which 
"he himself expressly declared that he was in no way opposed to 



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156 MYSTICAL SACRIFICE .QF THE PHOENICIANS. 

the worship of. the gods and the goddesses ;"l* .while our most orthodox 
Christian divines,. the best learned in ecclesiastical antiquity, and most 
entirely, persuaded of the truth of the Christian religion, unable to resist 
or to conflict with the constraining demonstration of the data that prove 
the absolute sameness and identity of Paganism and Christianity ; .and 
unable- to point out so much as one single idea or notion,, of which .they 
could show that it was peculiar to Christianity, or that .Christianity 
had it, and Paganism had it not; have invented .the apology of an 
hypothesis \ that, the Pagan religion, like ; the Jewish dispensation, was 
typical; a^d that Hercules, Adonis, W. were all of .them, types and 
forerunners of the true and jreal 'Hercules, Adonis, &c. our Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ Nothing is more easily conceivable, than that 
the priests and devotees of any one of the innumerable forms of absur- 
dity which superstition might from time to time assume, should decry 
all others, and pretend tfyat, their's alone was divine : nothing : is so hard 
to be conceived, as that a God of infinite wisdom and .truth should be 
the author of a religion so little. superior, and so closely resembling the 
devices of juggling priests and ge&interested impostors, that it should 
not be in the power of any, man. op .earth, who would judge impartially, 
to discover in what the .superiority consists ; or that there was really 
any difference at all between, them* 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE MYSTICAL SACRIFICE OF THE PHOENICIANS. 

."It was. an .established .custom .among the ancient Phoenicians, ^n fmy 
calamitous or dangerous emergency, far .the.ruler of t the state to qfier 
up, for the prevention of the general ruin, the most pearly beloved of 
his 'children as a ransom to. divert .the divine vengeance, £bey who 
were devoted for tyis purpose, were offered mystically, in consequence 
of an example which had been set this, people by the god Xronus, .who, 
in a time of distress, offered up his only son to Jus father Quranus. The 
mystical sacrifice of the Phgeniciaus had ,}hese requisites: 1st That a 
prince was ,to offer it ; 2nd. That his ( only ,sqn was to be fye victim ; 
3rd. SThat he was to make .tjhis grana sacrifice invested with the 
emblems of royalty *—)}ryaflt's Observations on Ancient History* 

• See the Chapter of Admission in this Diegesis ; and Jones onjhe Canoo, 
vol.1, p. }2 r 



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OflRISHNA. Uff 

quoted in Arehbitkop Mayee'* Work on ike Atonement 9 xo\. t \ 9 p. 388. 
This is the Archbishop of Dublin, whose -spirit, temper,.. and conduct 
. are so strikingly in harmony with those he ascribes , to a God delighting 
in blood and bloody sacrifices, famous for. his inexorable severity in the 
government of his diocese, and his cruel treatment of the inferior 
clergy ; nor less. distinguished for the convenient flexibility of. his own 
orthodoxy. He i is known in private, to laugh at the folly of his own 
doctrines, as in public he ventured, to declare, that though he. believed 
.inthe articles of the Church of England . collectively, he did not be- 
lieve in them separately. 

Here is, in; fact, a flrst draft of the whole Christian scheme, existing 
in a country neighbouring on Judea, many hundreds, of years before it 
became moulded, into its present shape. 

Jesus Christ, .the son of a king, is offered by God to. himself, to 
avert his own vengeance, and this is repeatedly called the mystery of 
ike Gospel,. (Col. i. 26.). Had the .Gospel been matter of feet, there 
could have been no mystery in it. 

" And they put on him a scarlet robe*" Matt, xxvii. 28. 

" And they clothed him with purple." -Mark. xv. 17. 

" And arrayed him in a gorgeous robe. Luke xxiii. 1 1. 

" And they put on him a purple robe." John xix. 2. 

And set up over his head, his. accusation, written — 

"rTgis is Jesus, the King of . this JEwa." Matt, xxvii. £7. 

" ^e King of the Jews." Mark xv. 26. 

" JThis is the King of the Je,ws." Luke xxiii. 38. 

" Jesus of Na 7 abeth the ,Kj;ng of the 
' Jews.* John xix 19. 

Such a mockerj of a dying malefactor, never, .in any other instance, 
disgraced tfye judicial administration xfi ,a Homan magistrate. 

£he addition of the important words, Jews of Nazareth, in the 
later Qospel of §t. John, strongly indicates the intention of making 
tbe. circumstances of a previously , existing gospel apply tP. a newly- 
inyented.name for the old hero. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 



CHRISHNA* 



" Tjiat v the name of Cmjjsh;na, ,and the general outline of his 
story," says' the pious and learned Sir William Jones, " were long 



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16ft GffRISBNA. 

i 
anterior to the birth of oar Saviour, and probably to the time of Homer, 
we know very certainty." — Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, p. 259. 

" In the Sanscrit Dictionary, compiled more than two thousand 
years ago, we have the whole story of the incarnate deity born of 8 
virgin, and miraculously escaping in his infancy from the seigmng tyrant 
of his country."— Ibid. pp. 259, 260, 267, 272, 273. 

" I am persuaded,'' continues this great author, than whom higher 
authority cannot be adduced—" I am persuaded, that a connection 
existed between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and 
Italy, long before the time of Moses." — Ibid. p. 259. 

" Very respectable natives have assured me, that one or two mis- 
sionaries have been absurd enough in their zeal for the conversion of 
the Gentiles to urge, that the Hindus were even now almost Christians; 
because their Brahma, Yishnou andnMahesa, were no other than the 
Christian Trinity ; a sentence, in whfoh we can only doubt whether 
folly, ignorance, or impiety, predominates. The Indian triad, and that 
of Plato, which he calls the Supreme good, the Reason, and the Soul, 
are infinitely removed from the holiness and sublimity of the doctrine 
which pious Christians have deduced from texts in the Gospel." — Ibid. 
p. 272. 

The celebrated poem Bhagavat, contains a prolix account of. the fife 
of Chrishna : — " Chrishna, the incarnate deity of the Sanscrit romance, 
continues to this hour the darling god of the Indian women. The sect 
of Hindus, who adore him with enthusiastic and almost exclusive devo- 
tion, have broached a doctrine which they maintain with eagerness, that 
he was distinct from all the avatars (or prophets), who had only a por- 
tion of his divinity, whereas Chrishna was the person of Yishnou (God) 
himself in a human form."* — Ibid. p. 260. 

Chrishna was believed to have been born from the left intercostal rib 
of a virgin of the royal line of Devaci. " He passed a life of a most 
extraordinary and incomprehensible nature. His birth was concealed 
through fear of the tyrant Cansa, to whom it had been predicted that 
one born at that time, m that family, would destroy him, — Ibid. p. 259. 

" He was fostered, therefore, in Mat'hura, by an honest herdsman, 
surnamed Ananda, or the Happy, and his amiable wife, Yasoda." — 
Ibid. vol. 1, p. 260. 

" Chrishna, when a boy, slew the terrible serpent Caliya, with a num- 
ber of serpents and monsters. He passed his youth in playing with a 
party of milk-maids ; and at the age of seven years, he held up a 

• " For in him dweUeth all {the fulness of the Godhead bodily."— -2 €olos- 
skns, 9. 



:ed«y Vj( 



CHRISBNA. 169 

mountain on the tip of his little finger. He saved multitudes, partly 
by his arms, and partly by his miraculous powers. He raised the dead* 
by descending for that purpose to the lowest regions. He was the 
cneekest and best-tempered of beings. He washed the feet of the 
Brahmins, and preached very nobly indeed, and sublimely, but always 
in their favour. He was pore and chaste in reality, bat exhibited an 
appearance of excessive libertinism; and had wives, or mistresses too 
numerous to be counted. Lastly, he was benevolent and tender, yet 
fomented and conducted a terrible war,"— Asiatic Researches, p. 273. 

" The adamantine pillars of our faith cannot be shaken by an inves- 
tigation of heathen mythology. I* who cannot help believing the 
divinity of the Messiah, from the undisputed antiquity, and manifest 
completion of many prophecies, &c. am obliged, of course, to believe the 
sanctity of the venerable books to which that sacred person refers." — 
Ibid. p. 233. 

The above extracts are taken literally from the 1st volume of the 
Asiatic Researches, chapter 9th, on the Gods of Greece, Italy, and 
India, written in 1784, and since revised by the president, Sir William 
Jones. 

I have thought it supremely important to present the text of this 
great author, and to leave the reader to draw his own conclusion. 
Higher authority could not be quoted. One better acquainted with 
the fiindostanee language, and with the documents and evidence from 
which such information could be acquired, could hardly be conceived 
to exist ; and certainly, never was any man further from the intention 
of supplying arms to infidelity. The unquestionable orthodoxy of Sir 
William Jones must, therefore, give to admissions surrendered by him, 
the utmost degree of cogency ; while his unequalled and unrivalled 
learning stands as a tower of strength, to render our position impreg- 
nable, upon the lines to which he has authorised our advance, and 
recognised our right 

Nothing in the whole compass of ecclesiastical history has so per- 
plexed and distressed the modern advocates of Christianity, as these 
surrenders made by their own best and ablest champion, to the cause 
of infidelity. Our evangelical polemics, indeed, lose aH temper upon 
hearing but an allusion to this most unluckily discovered prototype df 
their Jewish deity. No language of insolence against those who. point 
oat the resemblance, is too outrageous-— no shift or sophistication to 
evade or conceal it, too pitiful. 

The sun is not more dissimilar to the moon, say our Unitarian 
divines, than is Christina to Christ* No man in his, senses, say our 

• Rev. Mr. Beard's Third Letter to the Author, p. 8ft 



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160 CHRISHNA. 

evangelicals, could believe that the tw'o pewonagtes* wtere identical. 
Oar Methodists* meanly and pitifully alter the spiling- of the n^ttie 
from the original orthography, which rests on the h%h' authority of Sir 
William Jones, and invariably print it as Krishnu, or 1 Krishna, to 
screen the resemblance from the eye's observance; while' they' accuse 
their opponents of spellings it as they do (correctly), for the' contrary 
purpose of making the resemblance more striking. 



DB, BBNTXEY'S THEORT. 

Dr. Bentley, as a dernier resource, flies to astrology — source inex- 
haustible of all that is wild in conjecture, and delusive in argumentation, 
to supply his drowning hypothesis with a straw to swim on. " My 
attention/' says he, " was first drawn to this subject, by finding that a 
great many Hindu festivals marked in the calendar, had every, appear- 
ance of being modern ; for they agreed with the modern astronomy 
only, and not with the ancient. I observed also several passages in the 
Geeta having a reference to the new order of things. I was, therefore, 
induced to make particular inquiries about the time of Krishna, who, I 
was satisfied, was not near so ancient as pretended. f In these en- 
quiries, I was told the usual story, that Krishna lived a great many 
ages ago : that he was contemporary with Yudheshthira ; that Garga, 
the astronomer, was his priest; and that Garga was present at his birth, 
and determined the position of the planets at that moment ; which 
position was still preserved in some books to be found atnbng the 
astronomers: besides which, there was mention made of his birth in 
the Harivansa, and other Puranas. *f hese I examined, but found' tiiey 
were insufficient to point but the tinie;J I therefore directed iny atten- 
tion towards obtaining the Janamfatra of Krishna, containing the 
positions of the planets at his birth, which at length I was fortunate to 
meet with;§ from which it appears that Khrishna was born' on the 

• R»t. Drl John Pye 4 Smith, in answer to the Author, p. 54. A truly Wtilt me 
specimen of evangelical malignity; This 1 holy Parthian throws his stone, aad 
protects himself under pretence of treating his adversary with contempt! 

+ He was satisfied, it seems, before he began to enquire— a pretty good 
security to ensure that the result of his inquiry would be satisfactory. ^ He who 
is in possession of what he pretends to seek for, before he commences his search, 
will be sure to know when and where to find it. 

t Aye, tobe sure I to be sure 1 they pointed the wrong way ! 

§ fortunate fellow ! I'd have sworn he would have met with it! 



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CHRISHNA. 161 

23rd of the moon Sravana." The writer then gives the position of the 
planets at the birth of Krishna, and states that " they place the time of 
tne fiction in the year a, d. 600, on the 7th of August, at midnight." — 
Bentley on Ancient and Modern Hindu Astronomy, quoted by Mr. 
Beard, in his 3d Letter to the Author, p. 90. 

Dr. Bentley is indeed a name of first-rate honour among Christian 
theologues, and is frequently appealed to as one of their highest autho- 
rities, " the learned Bentley," " the prince of critics," &c. The 
reader, however, cannot be better led to judge how he should appre- 
ciate this great man's decision, than by consulting the temper and 
spirit which appears in the annexed specimen of his manner of answer- 
ing the objections of unbelievers, and which I find quoted by his zea- 
lous admirer: — "What a scheme would these men make? What 
worthy rules would they prescribe to providence ? And pray, to what 
great use or design ? To give satisfaction to a few obstinate untrace- 
able wretches; to those who are not convinced by Moses and the pro- 
phets, but want one to come from the dead and convert them ! Such 
men mistake the methods of Providence ? and the very fundamentals of 
religion, which draws its votaries by the cords of a man ; by rational, 
ingenuous, and moral motives; not by conviction mathematical, not 
by new evidence miraculous, to silence every doubt and whim that 
impiety and folly can suggest. And yet all this would have no effect 
upon such spirits and dispositions. If they now believe not Christ and 
his Apostles, neither would they believe if their own schemes were 
complied with." — Phileleulherus Lipsiensis, p. 114. 

The reader is here in full possession of the Christian argument. He 
must bear in mind, however, that the argument, as thus far stated, is 
entirely in Christian hands. Had we ventured to supply to these 
admissions, the further discoveries which unbelieving historians have 
made, we might have enriched our matter with the still more striking 
coincidence of the facts ; that the reputed father of Chrishna was a 
carpenter, and that he was put to death at last between two thieves ; 
after which* he arose from the dead, and returned again to his heavenly 
seat in Vaicontha; leaving the instructions contained in the Geeta to 
be preached through the continent of India by his disconsolate son, and 
disciple Arjun." 

Tractable indeed, and easy of faith, must the adopters of Dr. Bent- 
ley's explanation of the matter be, who can suffer evidence of this cha- 
racter, yielded and supplied as it is, by authority as great as any they 
can pretend, and that authority too, entirely adverse to our deductions, 
to be swept away by palmistry, by a calculation of the position of the 
planets ; or defeated by a sagacious discovery of some chronological 
21 * x 



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105 CHRISHNA. 

discrepancy, which Dr. Bentley who was satisfied that it was there be 
fore he looked for it, found in the Janampatra. 

The exquisite accuracy of the astrological demonstration, that 
Krishna was born on the 7th of August, a. d. 600, at midnight ; can 
only be put on the same footing with the chronology of Julius AM- 
canus, who has in like manner demonstrated that the world was made 
on the 1st of September, and was exactly five thousand five hundred 
and eighty years, three months, and twenty-five days old at the birth 
of Christ. 

The argument against the antiquity of the Hindu mythology, from 
the discovery that " a great many of its festivals, as now observed, 
agree with the modern astronomy only, and not with the ancient, " is 
of no more validity, than if it were objected (as with equal truth it 
might be) that the time of celebrating our Christian festivals has in like 
manner been accommodated to more modern arrangements of oar 
calendar, and agrees not with the ancient astronomy. When the 
Hindu astronomers at any time found it convenient to alter their 
calendar, it was surely as competent in them to make the times of 
celebrating their ancient festivals agree with their improved knowledge 
of astronomy; as it was for our Christian astronomers to alter the 
style, and to fix the celebration of Easter and Whitsuntide to different 
seasons of the year from those on which they had been observed for pre- 
vious ages. 

As for all the uncertainty with respect to the alleged time of the 
birth of Chrishna, there is but little ground for the advantage of 
Christians, who have never yet been able to fix the date of the day, or 
montb, or even of the year of the birth of Christ 

The year in which it happened, says Mosheim,* " has not hitherto 
been fixed with certainty, notwithstanding the deep and laborious 
researches of the learned." The learned John Albert Fabricius has 
collected all the opinions of the learned on the subjectf: that which 
appears most probable is, that it happened about a year and six months 
before the death of Herod, in the year of Rome 748 or 749. " The 
uncertainty, however, of this point/' continues our great ecclesiastical 
historian, "is of no great consequence. We know that the Sun of 
Righteousness has shone upon the world ; and although we cannot fix 
the precise period in which he arose, this will not preclude us from 
enjoying the direction and influence of his vital and salutary beams." 

This is the most unfortunate figure of speech (if it )*e no more than 

• Ecclesiastical History, vol. I, p. 53. 

f In his Biblhgraph. Antiquar, cap. 7, sect. 10, p. 187. 



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CHR1SHNA, m 

a figure of speech) that Christians could possibly resort to; since; 
instead of raising and exalting our ideas of the divine Saviour above 
all associations with the wild conceits of the heliolatry and idolatry of 
the heathen world, it brings us at once to the irresistible apprehension, 
that the Christian Saviour, after all, is no more than what the JEscu- 
lapius, Hercules, Adonis, Bacchus, Apollo, and Chrishna were ; that is, 
an emblematical personification of the Sun. 

* Colonel Valency," says Sir William Jones, " assures me that 
Chrishna in Irish means the Sun/' — Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, p. 262. 

The taking of the name of a thing in any unknown language for the 
name of a person, would naturally render these personifications infinite; 
and cause the natural history of things without life to be related or 
understood as if they had been real adventures of actually existing per- 
sonages. Hence, have we actions and sufferings, sentiments and affec- 
tions, and ail that could be predicated of rational beings — predicated 
not only of animals, but of vegetables and inanimate substances, of the 
works of men's hands, and even of the abstractions of their thoughts. 
The ship Argo, in which Jason and his companions sailed for the 
golden fleece, had its imaginary moral qualities ; it fought the waveg, 
it suffered, it conquered, it was translated into heaven. The dispo- 
sition of mind called charity, is described by St. Paul, under all the 
circumstances that could be imagined of a most accomplished and 
lovely woman : She suffereth long, and is kind; she doth not behave 
herself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked,* 9 &c. 
(1 Cor. xiii.) ; though nothing could be further from his intention, than 
that we should take charity to be a person who had a real existence, and 
fall to the folly of endeavouring to find out when she was born, under 
what king's reign, and in what country, &c. ; as it may be conjectured 
some have done with respect to other personifications, whose existence, 
actions and sufferings, were of an equally metaphorical and figurative 
origination. But if the identity of the mythological personages, Christ 
and Chrishna, and the absolute derivation of the Christian from the 
Hindu or Brahminical religion, might yet seem matter rather of 
curious excogitation, than of satisfactory proof; the matter receives the 
utmost corroboration which any historical fact of such remote antiquity, 
could be conceived to have, from the entire discomfiture and overthrow 
of all attempts to evade the conclusion, which we achieve in the 
strength of farther researches, later discoveries, and ampler conces- 
sions won from the conviction of the most intelligent of Christians 
themselves, who have dared to trust themselves with the important 
investigation. 

We have become better acquainted with the evidences of the Chris- 



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16* CHRISHNA, 

tian religion than it was possible for the Lardners, Watsons, or Paleys 
to have been. — We have means of information which they had not. — 
We are in possession of intelligence, the result of more extensive re- 
search, of more impartial enquiry, and of more recent discoveries, cf 
which they were absolutely ignorant. 

No work whatever, of the divines of the now antiquated school of 
Christian -evidence writers, can be fairly adduced either as authority or 
argument, against the thousand- fold more formidable array of objec- 
tions which have emerged even within the last ten years, from the fur- 
ther concessions made by divines themselves, from the improved powers 
of reasoning, advanced science, extended knowledge, and greater moral 
courage of unbelievers, to bring up that silence and knowledge to the 
conflict. 

To pretend any longer that infidels insist only on arguments that 
have already been answered, or refuted, is to discover the grossest 
ignorance of what their arguments really are, and in that ignorance to 
find the only excuse for what such a pretence really is, — the grossest 
falsehood. 

To pretend to refer the anxious mind for the solution of its doubts to 
any defence of the Christian religion written earlier than the present 
century, is but parallel in absurdity to the setting a medical student 
of the present day to acquire his knowledge of chymistry and physic 
from the cumbrous folios of Paracelsus, Bombastus, or the Commen- 
taries of Van Sweeten, Hippocrates, and Galen. 

After the unmeasured abuse, and bitter vituperations which I have 
incurred for the prominence which I have given to this most pregnant 
argument, I find Godfrey Higgins, Esq. of Skellow Grange, Yorkshire, 
himself a very learned, ingenuous* and sincere Christian, in his superb 
work on the Celtic Druids, published by R. Hunter, 1827, thus laying 
at our feet, the keys of the fortress, in the assault of which, I have 
taken such hard words, hard usage, and every thing that was hard 
except hard arguments : — 

" After Baillie, and some other learned astronomers had turned 
their attention to the ancient astronomical instruments, calculations, 
and observations of India, it was discovered that they proved the 
antiquity of the world to be so great, that what was called by our 

* Mr. Higgins must forgive my hoping, that his false way of spelling 
Christina (which is certainly Chrishna, and not Krishna), may not be an ex- 
ception against his ingenuousness. It was very natural that he should •endea- 
vour to bring his Christ out of the scrape as well as he could, and save his Saviour ! 
But Krishna, or Chrishna, is fatal to Christ, spell him e'en as you will 1 



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CHRISHNA. 165 

priests, the Mosaic system of chronology, could not be supported. 
Immediately upon this, they set every engine at work to counteract 
the effects of the recorded observations of the Hindus, by representing 
that they are, in fact, merely pretended observations founded on back- 
reckonings." 

" Professor Playfair of Edinburgh, has given the most decisive 
proofs in the Edinburgh Philosophical Transactions* that the Brah- 
mins, to have made the back-reckonings, must have been well ac- 
quainted with the most refined of the theoretical improvements of 
modern astronomy. Instead of having forgot the principles of their 
formulae, they must have been much more learned than we know they 
were, and in fact than their ancestors; indeed more learned than our 
modern astronomers were, until the astronomical theories of Newton 
were completed very lately, by the discoveries of some of the French 
philosophers." 

" Near the city of Benares, in India, are the astronomical instru- 
ments cut out of the solid rock of a mountain, which in former times, 
were used for making the observations, which Sir William Jones and 
the priests say, were only back-reckonings. The Bramins of the pre- 
sent day, it is said, do not know the- use of them ; they are of great 
size, and tradition states them to be of the most remote antiquity. If 
the astronomical facts stated in the works of the Bramins, be the effects 
of the back-reckonings, the Bramins of the present day are as ignorant 
of the formulae on which they are grounded, as they are of the nature 
of the astronomical instruments. If they have become acquainted with 
them, it is by the instruction of Europeans." 

" A gentleman, in the Asiatic Researches, has lately, by means of 
the most deeply learned and laborious calculations, f discovered that 
the history of Krishna, one of the most celebrated Gods of the Hindoos, 
was invented in the year of Christ six hundred ; and .that the story was 
laid about the beginning of the Christian sera. This goes directly to 
overthrow all the Hindoo calculations. He has proved this as clear 
as the sun at noonl He has absolutely demonstrated it! but it is 
unfortunate for this demonstration, that the statue of this God is to be 
found in the very oldest caves and temples throughout all India, — 
temples, the inscriptions on which are in a language used previously to 
the Sanscrit, and now totally unknown to all mankind,, any day to be 
seen among other places, in the city of Seringham, and the temple at 
Malvalipuram." 

• See Vol. 2, and Vol. 4. 

+ These " laborious calculations," are Dr. Bentley's wretched shifts to save 
Christianity/* 



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166 CHR1SHNA. 

" It has been moreover satisfactorily proved, on the authority of a 
passage of Adrian, that the worship of Khrishna, was practised in the 
time of Alexander the Great (330 years before Christ), at what still 
remains one of the most famous temples of India, the temple of Mathora, 
on the Jumna, the Matura Deorum of Ptolemy. So much for this 
astronomical demonstration. — Celtic Druids, pp. 154, 155, 156, 157* 

" It seems the miraculously and stupendously learned Bentley, who 
was to put all the enemies of the Lord to silence, has reckoned without 
his host ; aud in discovering by help of the Janampatra, that, from a 
certain relative location of the planets, it would appear that Chrishna 
was born on the 7th of August a. d. 600, at midnight ; it happened 
most unfortunately for his learned wiseacreship, not to occur to him, 
that all these facts of the locations of the planets, are periodical— so 
that if he be right, that the time of the birth of Chrishna can be in* 
ferred from such a location and the circumstances attending it, (a 
thing in itself very doubtful) ; all that he will prove, will be, that the 
pretended birth of this God must have taken place, at a similar part of 
a period, sometime before the war of Alexander the Great. And thus, 
if we know the length of the period or cycle referred to, we shall know 
the latest time at which this God was feigned to be born before the 
birth of Alexander." Mr. Higgins informs us, that when our army 
of Indian Seapoys arrived at Thebes in Egypt in the course of the 
French war, they discovered their favourite God Chrishna, and instantly 
fell to worshipping, (" no doubt the cunning rogues of Bramins* came 
to Egypt in the year 600, and placed his statue amongst the ruins !") 

"I made every attempt my time would permit," says Col. Fiteclarence, 
" to discover the celebrated figure which caused the Hindoos with the 
Indian contingent, to find fault with the natives of this country, for 
allowing a temple of Vishnou to tall to ruins ; but did not succeed."! 

" I could say much more," says Mr. Higgins, " on the subject of thi* 
temple at Mathura, for it is very curious — but I much prefer letting it 
alone !!!"— Celtic Druids, p. 137. 

In the name of God what means this letting it alone f Christians 
have to thank their persecuting City Aldermen, their prompt recourse 
to the arguments of stone and iron, their Dorchester and Oakham , that 
when really learned and intelligent men tread on the threshold of the 
most important discoveries, they much prefer " letting it alone" and 
leaving us to guess, where we might certainly have known. 

* This sarcasm is very severe, but it is from the pen of Christian Mr. Hig&in* 
a believer in divine revelation, 
f In his Travels, p. p. 393. 394. 



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CBRISHNA. Iff 

In this dilemma, we may guess with a conviction little short of cer- 
tainty — that it was never a little that priests would boggle at— 1. That 
the celebrated figure which Col. Fitzclarence was hindered from seeing, 
would have established the absolute identity of the Indian Chrishna and 
the Egyptian Christ : 

In confirmation of this guess (if it be no more), we have the further 
light of an admission from the Rev. Mr. Maurice, of the curious fact 
that " the two principal pagodas of India, viz. those of Benares and 
Mathura, are built in the form of crosses."* 

2. That the grounds on which the Hindoos found fault with the 
British government for allowing a temple of Vishnou to fall to ruins, 
was, that the Christian religion was absolutely one and the same with 
the ancient Hindoo idolatry: 

3. That the travelling Egyptian Therapeuts brought the whole story 
from India to their monasteries in Egypt, where, some time about the 
commencement of the Roman monarchy, it was transmuted into Chris- 
tianity. The tales that had been previously told of the idol of the 
Ganges, were transferred to the twice-living demon of the Jordan, 
precisely as we see the histories of the Grecian heroes, plagiarised and 
told over again of Romans. Thus the combat of the Horatii and 
Curiatii, had been related under different names, but with the same 
circumstances, by Democrates apud Stobceum. The action of Mutius 
Scsevola was told before of Agesilaus, and that of Curtius precipitation 
himself into the gulf, has been ascribed also to a son of King Midas. 
See also Pagan heroes turned into Christian saints, out of number: 
indeed, half the saints of the Roman calendar are heathen gods and 
goddesses, and like the Jewish- Jesus, a false creation proceeding from 
the heat oppressed brain. 

4. And lastly, that the Missionaries engaged by the East India 
Company, and otherwise sent to India for the ostensible purpose of 
propagating the gospel, are employed really in the diametrically oppo- 
site work, of doing their utmost to suppress it ; and to carry on the 
counsel which we see guiding their machinations at home, suppressing 
evidence, perverting facts, destroying or hindering the monuments of 
antiquity from coming to the knowledge of the community, persecuting 
and railing at infidels, and keeping up that state of general ignorance 
and consequent devotion, that best disposes enslaved and degraded 
millions to bow to the yoke of tyranny, and " to order themselves 
lowly and reverently to all their betters." 

* Maurice's Indian Antiquities, vol. 2, p. 361, quoted by Mr. Higgins, 
P. 127, Celtic Druids. 



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168 APOLLO. 

CHAPTER XXV. 

APOLLO — JESUS CHRIST. 

Cicero mentions four of this name. Pausanias and Herodotus rank 
Apollo among the Egyptian deities. Diodorus Siculus expressly states, 
that Isis, after having invented the practice of medicine, taught this 
art to her son Orus, named also Apollo, who was the last of the Gods 
that reigned in Egypt. It is easy to trace almost all the Grecian fables 
and mythologies from Egypt. If the Apollo of the Greeks, was said 
to be the son of Jupiter, it was because Orus, the Apollo of the Egyp- 
tians, had Osiris for his father, whom the Greeks confounded with 
Jupiter. If the Greek Apollo were reckoned the God of eloquence, 
music, medicine, and poetry, the reason was that Osiris, who was the 
symbol of the sun among the Egyptians, as well as his son Orus, had 
there taught those liberal arts. If the Greek Apollo were the God and 
conductor of the muses, it was because Osiris carried with him in his 
expedition to the Indies, singing women and musicians. This parallel 
might be carried still further, but enough has been said to prove that 
the true Apollo was probably of Egypt. Plutarch, however, has 
decisively shown, that the Egyptians worshipped the Sfltt under the 
name of Osiris; and as Osiris was believed to have travelled into 
India, and there established civilization and religion, we see at once 
enough to account for the same God coming to be worshipped in India 
under a designation in the language of thai country expressive of the 
same sense as Chrishna, that is, the Sun. Many have doubted whether 
Apollo were a real personage, or only the great luminary. Vossius 
has taken pains to prove this God to be only an ideal being, and that 
there was never any Apollo but the sun. All the ceremonies performed 
to his honour, had a manifest relation to the great source of light which 
he represented ; whence, this learned writer concludes it to be in vain 
to seek for any other divinity than the sun, adored under the name 
of Apollo. 

Without any wish to overthrow or to conflict against a conclusion 
founded upon such just and incontrovertible premises, one yet cannot 
restrain one's wish to have known whether so sincere * Christian, in 
considering the language ascribed to the God Apollo, and the manifest 
relation to the great source of light in all the ceremonies performed to 
his honour, as constituting a complete demonstration, that such a per- 
sonage as Apollo never had any real existence, and that it was the sun, 
and the sun only that was worshipped under that designation ; whether 



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APOLLO. 169 

he had found any clearer reference to the source of light in that lan- 
guage, and those ceremonies, than — 

1. That God should be believed to have said of himself, " / am the 
light of the world." — John iv. 5. " I am come a light Mo the world, 
that whosoever believeth in me should not abide in darkness." — John 
xii. 46. 

2. " He hath sent me to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
—Luke iv. 19. 

3. That his sacred legends should abound only with such expressions 
as can have no possible or conceivable application, but to the God of 
day : " A light to lighten the Gentiles, and to be the glory (or bright- 
ness) of his people. 9 * — Luke ii. 32. 

4. That this should be the express message which his apostles, or 
months, were to declare concerning him, that " God is light, and in him 
is no darkness at all."— 1 John i. 5 

6\ That his sincerest worshippers should usually have addressed him 
in such phrases as " Phosphore redde diem."— 

Sweet Phosphor bring the day, 

Whose conqu'ring ray 

May chase these fogs,— sweet Phosphor bring the day. 

Quarte's rendering of Psalm xiii. 

6. " Lighten our darkness toe beseech thee, Adonai, and by thy great 
mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night." — Collect in 
Evening Service. 

7. " God of God, Light of light, very God of very God."—Nicene 
Creed. 

8. "Merciful Adonai, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of 
light upon thy church."— Collect of St. John. 

9. " God, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only 5e- 
gotten Son to the nations. 9 '— Collect of the Epiphany* 

10. " To thee all angels cry aloud, the heavens, and all the powers 
therein" 

11. Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy Clary " — / or 
brightness). 

• Or thining forth.— X Christian poet will best instruct us what star that was J 
It was none other than Venus, the star of the God of day, 
Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, 
If better, thou belong not to the dawn — 
Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling mom 
With thy bright circlet!— Morning Hymn. 



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170 APOLLO. 

12. " The clarioiu company of the (twelve months, or) apostles 
praise thee." 

13. " Thou art the King of Clary, Christ !* 

14. " When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou pattest 
through the constellation, or Zodiacal sign — the Virgin" 

15. " When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of Winter, thou didst 
open the kingdom of heaven,— i. e. bring on the reign of the summer 
months to all believers" And why is it there should not be one 
single phrase or form of speech either in the New Testament or in our 
best Catholic or Protestant liturgies, but in the most strict and literal 
sense is predicable of the Sun, but cannot without an inflected and 
considerably strained use of speech, and still more strained effort of the 
understanding, apply to the person of a man. Resuraere, to rise again ; 
and ascendere in cesium, to ascend into heaven, are expressions so 
plain and obvious, as that we could hardly find any to express the literal 
sense, nearer, of what we witness of the rising and setting sun every 
day of our lives ; whereas 'tis only by a most awkward and violent 
catachresis in language, that they can be made to convey their theolo- 
gical significancy. 

" All are agreed," says Cicero, " that Apollo is none other than 
the Sun, because the attributes which are commonly ascribed to Apollo 
do so wonderfully agree thereto."* 

We are not allowed, however, to assume, that reasoning so incon- 
trovertibly just and conclusive with respect to the Pagan deity, would 
hold in any parity of application to Jesus Christ, whom his holy Apostle 
so emphatically distinguishes as being " the true light which lighteth 
every man that comet h into the world" — John i. 9. 

There can be no doubt but that Apollo was more generally received 
in the Pagan world than any other deity, his worship being so universal, 
that in almost every region he had temples, oracles, and festivals, as in- 
numerable as his various names and attributes. Among the most con- 
spicuous of his oracles were those of Phosis at Claros in Ionia, at Delos, 
Delphi, and Didyma,f on Mount Ismenus, in Bceotia, at Larissa, among 
the Argives, and at Heliopolis in Egypt* 

" The Egyptians sometimes symbolized him by a radiated circle, and 

* Apolinem, aliud nihil esse quam Solem, omnes consentiunt, quippe cui ilia 
que Apollini valgo tribuuntur, mire conveniunt.— Cic. 3; De Natura Deo. 

f It can only be ascribed to a momentary suspension of the divine influence 
which guided the pen of the Evangelist, that one of the epithets of Apollo— 
Didymus, should have been left in the possession of an Apostle of Jesus Christ. 
John xx. 24. 



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MERCURY. 171 

at others by a sceptre with an eye above it— a symbol which we see at 
this day consecrated to the representation of the Christian Providence. 
Nor should we forget the claims of his ministers to a peculiar character 
of sanctity and holiness, which we may well wonder how they should 
ever come to surrender to the pretensions of the preachers of Chris- 
tianity: unless, indeed, we should venture to imagine that there was 
never any real difference between them, and that the priests of Apollo 
and of Jesus were ministers of the same religion, and of one and the 
same deity, under different names. Tis certain that Apollo had a 
celebrated shrine at Mount Soracte in Italy, where his priests were so 
remarkable for sanctity, and holiness of heart and life, that they could 
walk on burning coals unhurt." — Bell's Pmth. in loco. 

Parkhurst, in his Hebrew Lexicon, under the word ^Vn 4, informs us, 
that " the rv fjbn — * Praise ye Jah !' or * Hallelujah !' which the Septua- 
gint have left untranslated, Ax\nWi«, which begins and ends so many 
of the Psalms ascribed to David, was a solemn form of praise to God, 
which, no doubt, was far prior to the time of David ; since the ancient 
Greeks had their similar acclamation, E\t\w In — « Hallelujee V with 
which they both began and ended their pawns, or hymns, in honour of 
Apollo." 



CHAPTER XXVI. 



MERCURY — JESUS CHRIST. 



This god calls for no further notice in our inquiry, than from the cir- 
cumstance of his having been distinguished in the Pagan world by the 
evangelical title of the Logos, or the Word—" The Word that in the 
beginning was God, and that also was a God." 

Our Christian writers, from whose partial pens we are now obliged 
to gather all they will permit us to know of the ancient forms of piety, 
discover considerable apprehension, and a jealous caution in their lan- 
guage where the resemblance between Paganism and Christianity might 
be apt to strike the mind too cogently. Where Horace gives us a 
very extraordinary account of Mercury's descent into hell,* and his 
causing a cessation of the sufferings there,f our Christian mythologist 

• " He descended into hell,"— Apostles* Creed. " That he went down into 
hell, and also did rise again." — Baptismal Service. " By which also he went 
aad preached unto the spirits in prison."— 1 Pet. iii. 19. 

|- See the Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus. 



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173 MERCURY. 

checks oar curiosity, by the sadden break off—" As this perhaps may 
be a mystical part of his character, we had better let it alone." — Belli 
Panth. vol. 2, p. 72. But the further back we trace the evidences of 
the Christian religion, the less concerned we find its advocates to 
maintain, or even to pretend that there was any difference at all be- 
tween the essential doctrines of Christianity and Paganism. 

Ammonius Sacccs, a learned Christian Father, towards the end of 
the second century, had taught with the highest applause in the Alex* 
andrian school, that all the Gentile religions, and even the Christian, 
were to be illustrated and explained by the principles of an universal 
philosophy ; but that, in order to this, the fables of the priests were to 
be removed from Paganism, and the comments and interpretations of 
the disciples of Jesus from Christianity :• while Justin Martyr, the first 
and most distinguished apologist for the Christian religion, who wrote 
within fifty years of the time of the Evangelist St. John, boldly chal- 
lenges the respect of the emperor Adrian and his son, as due to the 
Christian religion, just exactly on the score of its sameness and identity 
with the ancient Paganism. 

" For by declaring the Logos, the first begotten of God, our Master, 
Jesus Christ, to be born of a virgin without any human mixture, to be 
crucified and dead, and to have risen again into heaven ; we say no 
more in this, than what you say of those whom you style the sons of 
Jove, &c. As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we allow him to 
be nothing more than man, yet the title of the Son of God is very jus- 
tifiable on account of his wisdom, considering that you have your 
Mercury in worship under the title of The Wobd, and Messenger of 
God."— Reeve's Apologies of the Fathers, vol. 1, London, 1716. 

Justin might, if he had pleased, have been still more particular, and 
have shown, that " among the Gauls, more than a hundred years 
before the Christian era, in the district of Chartres, a festival was 
annually celebrated to the honour of the Virgo Paritura, the virgin that 
should bring forth" — Dupuis, torn. 3, p. 51, 4to. edit. 

Gonzales also writes, that among- the Indians he found a temple 
Pariturae Virginis, of the Virgin about to bring forth. 

The good Christian Father Epiphanias glories in the fact, that the 
prophecy, " Behold a virgin shall conceive and bring forth a son," had 
been revealed to the Egyptians. — Celtic Druids, p. 163. This pro- 
phecy, however, should rather have been revealed to the Irish, as its 
literal accomplishments is so strikingly of a piece with the equally 
authentic miracles of their patron saint, who sailed across the ocean 

* Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. vol. 1, p. 171. 



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ar ■ : ■ 



THE WORD'. 173 

upon a mill-stone, and contrived to heat an oven red-hot with nothing 
but ice.—" Life of the glorious Bhhop St. Patrick, by Fr. B. B. St. 
Omer$ % and of the Commissary and Dcjinitor- general of the Seraphic 
Order." 



THE WOBD— JE8US CHRIST. 

The celebrated passage, " In the beginning mas the Wora\ and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was Goa\" &c. (John i. 1.) is a 
fragment of some Pagan treatise on the Platonic philosophy, and as 
such is quoted by Amelias, a Pagan philosopher, as strictly applicable to 
the Logos, or Mercury, the Word, as early as the year 263 ; and is 
quoted appropriately as an honourable testimony borne to the Pagan 
deity, by a barbarian. 

With no intention further off. than that of recognising the claims of 
any human being to that title, Amelius has the words, " And this 
plainly was the Word, by whom all things were made, he being him- 
self eternal, as Heraclitus also would say ; and by Jove,, the same whom 
the barbarian affirms to have been in the place and dignity of a prin- 
cipal, and to be with God, and to be God, by whom all things were 
made, and in whom every thing that was made, has its life and being ; 
who, descending into body, and putting on flesh, took the appearance 
of a man, though even then he gave proof of the majesty of his nature ; 
nay, and after his dissolution, he was deified again."* 

This is the language of one, of whom there is not the least pretence 
to show that he was a believer of the Gospel, or even if he had ever 
heard of it, that he did not reject it ; it was the language of clear, un- 
disguised, and unmingled Paganism. The Logos then, or Word was 
a designation purely and exclusively appropriate to the Pagan ny- 



The Valentinians, a sect of Christian heretics of the first century, 
approximated so closely to Paganism, as to respect and believe a regu- 

* Km «to$ *pa w o Xovo?, xa&w an ©vt* t* ywo/Awa tyiuTo, w$ »9 xou 
o HpaxXiiTo; if wcrut xeu tn J»\ « o j&xoCapo* ct£w » t*k *PX"? t *I" ti *** a f *• 
xa&oTwora irpo? 9io» m»h , j» a iron? eHrXw<r ytyvmrSeu n w to ytvoptwv £w 
«w £w, kou <n KtQvxtvcu xcu uq arvfiar* ffiTTttv, xau vapx* tydWa/ufyoy, ^cwto^ 
i<r3«i owfyawroy, ptTttKCU t« numavrctiuiuvw m$ <£t/<rtwj to fxtyotXuov, aucXu jcom 
antXudirra vatut <zt(t§wo§cu xat 9io» uvau, o*©$ w Tpo to iij a-ufjM xeu t*k cratxa 
neu to» a»3pw*ro» juwojxSmww. — Euieb. prap. Evan* lib. xi. c. 19. Citante 
Lardnero, torn. 4, p. 200. 



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IM BACCHUS. 

lar theogony, holding, according to Cyrill, that Depth produced 
Silence, and upon Silence begat the Logos.* 



CHAPTER XXVII 



BACCHUS — JESUS CHRIST 



Was the god of good cheer, wine, and hilarity ; and as such, the poetg 
have been eloquent in his praises. On all occasions of mirth and 
jollity, they constantly invoked his presence, t and as constantly thanked 
him for the blessings he bestowed. To him they ascribed the greatest 
happiness of which humanity is capable* — the forgetfulness of cares, 
and the delights of social intercourse. It has been usual for Christians 
invariably to represent this God as a sensual encourager of inebriation 
and excess ; and reason enough it must be admitted that they have 
for giving such a colouring to the matter ; since, only by so doing, 
could they conceal the resemblance which an impartial observance 
would immediately, discover between the Phoenician Ybsus,J who 
taught mankind the culture of the vine, and so without a miracle 
changed their drink from mere water into wine, " which cheereth God 
and man," (Judges ix. 13), and the Egyptian Jesus, who, by a ma- 
noeuvre upon half a dozen water-pots, was believed to have persuaded 
a company of intoxicated guests, that he had turned water into wine; 
of which the narrator of tie story, with a striking tone of sarcasm, 
remarks, " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, 
and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him," 
(John ii. 11). As much as to say, that his disciples only would be the 
advocates of so egregious an imposture. " He manifested forth his 
glory ;" that is, his peculiar mythological character, as the God of 
Wine, which was in like manner the peculiar characteristic of 
Bacchus. 

The real origin of the mystical three letters IHS, surrounded with 
rays of glory, to this day retained even in our Protestant churches, and 

* Bvdo? vymwt Xiyw, xaw euro rns Ziyuf miwwwm* Aoyoy. 

f "F or where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in 
the midst of them." — Matt, xviii. 20. 

t Yesus. — Volney has shown that Yxs was one of the names of Bacchus, 
which with the latin termination, is nothing else than Yesus or Jesus. 



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BACCUS. 175 

falsely supposed to stand for Jesus Hominum Salvator, is none other 
than the identical name of Bacchus — Yes, exhibited in Greek letters, 
TH2. — See Hesychius, on the word THE, t. e. Yes, Bacchus, Sol, the 
Sun. 

The well-paid apologists of this and all other absurdities that have 
obtained their translation from Pagan into Christian legends, in vain 
endeavour to blink the obscenity betrayed in their Greek text. This 
miracle was not performed till all the witnesses of it were in the last 
stage of intoxication. " Every man at the beginning doth set forth 
good wine, and when men have well drunk, then that which is worse ; 
but thou hast kept the good wine until now" is the remark of the Archi- 
triclinius, or ruler of the feast, the only individual, perhaps, except those 
who contributed to the juggle, who could speak at alL " Hast kept 
the good wine until now ;" that is to say, " Till now, that it is all over 
with them, and you see them sprawling under the table, or scarce 
knowing whether their heads or heels are uppermost" The original 
text supports this sense, as the same will be found in the drunken odes 
of Anacreon : " To arms ! But I shall drink. Boy, bring me the 
goblet ! for I had rather lie dead drunk, than dead.."* 

Nothing short of a debility of intellect produced by religious enthu- 
siasm, similar to the sedative effects of frequently-repeated intoxica* 
tion, could have hindered Christians from seeing the deep and pungent 
sarcasm on their religion involved in this drunken miracle, which a 
moment's rational reflection would expose. In any sense but that of 
an imposition preached upon men's senses, the miracle involves a phy- 
sical impossibility, and a moral contradiction. In no idea that a 
rational mind can form of the power of God himself, can we conceive 
that he could make a thing to be and not to be, at the same time ; or so 
operate on the past, as to cause that to haife been which really had not 
been. That fluid, therefore, whatever it was, which had not been 
pressed out of the grape, — which had not been generated, concocted, 
matured and exuded through the secretory ducts of the vine, drawn up 
by its roots out of the earth, circulated through its capillary tubes, and 
effunded into its fruity could not be wine, nor could God himself make 
it to be so. 



* OirXt^ ry» h *thm# Ifo* av$po>irof vpurot tot xoAot owov 

•iff tfiM xtnriAXoptf wou 1 t*S*wi, xou orcw pi^Wdciwi rori top 

Mi$vorra yap pt %ttc§ou ttocovu. 

IIoAAu xpuovot n dauwrra. 

Anacreon. St. John* 



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17* BACCHUS* 

" That were to make 
Strange contradiction, which to God himself 
Impossible is held." Milton. 

The more shrewd and political among those who profess and call 
themselves Christians, have avowed themselves not a little ashamed of 
this miracle, have seen and recognized its palpably Pagan character, 
and sighed, and'twished that it were peacefully apocryphized out of its 
place in the sacred volume. 

Our oniy moral use of these Christian admissions shall be to remind 
our readers for the advancement of some further stage of our arguments 
that we have here, in the very volume which has so long been pretended 
to contain " truth without any mixture of error/' an affair not onld 
decidedly and unequivocally fabulous, but physically impossible ; any 
this re-edited under an apparatus of Christian names, and told with 
circumstances of time, place, and character — stet exempli gratia I 



The Egyptian Bacchus was brought up at Nysa, and is famous a 8 
having been the conqueror of India. In Egypt he was called Osuia 
in India Dionysius, and not improbably Chrishna, as he was called, 
Adoneus, which signifies the Lord of Heaven, or the Lord ajntd Gives 
of light, in Arabia ; and Liber, throughout the Roman dominions, 
fo m whence is derived our term liberal, for every thing that is gene- 
rous, frank, and amiable. 

Though egregiously scandalized by the moderns, as all the Pagan 
divinities are, where Christians are the carvers, he was far otherwise 
understood by the ancients. The intention of his imagined presence 
at the festive board, was to restrain and prevent, and not to authorize 
excess. His discipline prescribed the most strict sobriety, and the 
most rational and guarded temperance in the use of his best gift to 
man, which, wisely used, exalts as much our moral as it does our phy- 
sical energies, endears man to man, gives vigour to his understanding, 
life to his wit, and inspiration to his discourse. Bacchus was, in the 
strictest and fairest sense of the word, a pure and holy god ; he was 
deity rendered amiable. He is called by Horace in general the modest 
God, the decent God. The finest moral of his allegorical existence is. 
that he was never to be seen in company with Mars ; so that he had 
juster claims than any other to be designated the " Prince of Peace" 
Orpheus*, however, directly states that Bacchus was a lawgiver, calls 

* Orpheus, who for the most part is followed by Homer, was the great intro- 
ducer of the rites of the heathen worship among the Greeks, bein w> charged with 



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BACCHUS. 177 

him Moses, and attributes to him the two tables of the law.t It is 
well known* however, that his characteristic attribute was immortal 
boyhood ; and since it is admitted that no real Bacchus ever existed, 
but that he was only a mask or figure of some concealed truth, (see 
Horace's inimitable ode to this deity) there can be no danger of our 
dropping the clue of his allegorical identification, in winding it through 
all the mazes of his vocabulary of names, and all the multifarious 
personifications of the same primordial idea. 

But the most striking circumstance of this particular emblem of the 
Sun is, that in all the ancient forms of invocation to the Supreme 
Being, we find the very identical expressions appropriated to the 
worship of Bacchus ; such as, Io Terombe ! — Let us cry unto the Lord / 
Io! or Io Baccoth! — God, tee our tears t Jehovah Evan! Hevoe 
and Eloah ! — The author of our existence, the mighty God / Hu Esh ! — 
Thou art the fire ! and Elta Esh I— Thou art the life ! and Io Nissi !— 
Lord, direct us/ which last is the literal English of the Latin 
motto in the arms of the City of London retained to this day, "Domine 
dirige nos" The Romans, out of all these terms, preferred the name 
of Baccoth, of which they composed Bacchus. The more delicate ear 
of the Greeks was better pleased with the words Io Nisst, out of which 
they formed Dionysius. 

That it was none other than the Sun which the Jews themselves 
understood to be meant, and* actually worshipped, under his charac- 
teristic epithet of The Loud, see " confirmation strong as proof of 
holy writ" in the Jewish general's address to the Sun : — 

" Then spake Joshua to the Lobd, and said, Sun, stand thou still 
upon Gibeon I So the Sun stood still in the midst of heaven. And 
there was no day like that, before it and after it, that the Lord 
hearkened unto the voice of a man"— Joshua x. 12, 13, 14. 



The Bacchanalia, or religious feasts in honour of Bacchus, were 
celebrated with much solemnity, and with a fervent and impassionate 
piety, among the ancients, particularly the Athenians, who, till the 
commencement of the Olympiads, even computed their years from 

having invented the very names of the gods. He wrote, that all things were 
made by One Godhead with three names, and that this God ie all things. — 
Hebrew Lexicon, 347. 

t Bacchum, Orpheus vocat prow hoc est Moses et 0i<r/*o$opof— Legislatorem 
et eidera tribuit hie\»K» $e<t/ao» quasi duplices iegis tabulas. — Forney Panth. 
Mythicum, p. 57. 

23 z 



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178 BACCHUS. 

them, dated all transactions and events, as Christians have since done 
with an Anno Domini, in the year of our Lord. The Bacchanalia are* 
sometimes called Orgies, from the transport and enthusiasm with which 
they were celebrated. The form and disposition of the solemnity de- 
pended at Athens on the appointment of the supreme magistrate, and 
was at first extremely simple ; but by degrees it became encumbered 
with abundance of ceremonies, and attended with a world of dissolute- 
ness and excess, probably competing in enormity and indecency with a 
Christian carnival : so that the Pagan Romans, who had adopted the 
orgies, were afterwards ashamed of the exhibition, and suppressed them 
throughout Italy by a decree of the Senate. 

The orgies celebrated originally to the honour of Bacchus, are still 
continued in honour of the same deity, under another epithet ; as may 
be observed by any person who should choose to waste an hour in 
attending the revival meetings of the wilder orders of Christian metho- 
dists — the Dunkers, Jumpers, &c. and all who pretend to a more 
spiritual and primitive Christianity. The hysterical young women, 
sighing, moaning, 

" Exulting, trembling, raging, fainting, 
Possessed, beyond the muse's painting," 

under the impressions which our evangelical fanatics endeavour to pro- 
duce on their imaginations, are the very antitypes of the frantic 
priestesses of Bacchus. Nor can any man doubt, that if the advance 
of civilization, and the improved reason of mankind, did not stand in 
bar of such excesses, the state of mind called sanctification, which oar 
clergy aim to render as general as they can, would continue as evan- 
gelized Bacchanalia to this day. 

In the ancient Orphic verses sung in the orgies of Bacchus, as cele- 
brated throughout Egypt, Phoenicia, Syria, Arabia, Asia Minor, 
Greece, and ultimately in Italy, it was related how that God, who had 
been born in Arabia, 'was picked up in a box that floated on the water, 
and took his name Mises, in signification of his having been " saved 
from the waters,"* and Bimater, from his having had two mothers ;t that 
is, one by nature, and another who had adopted him. He had a rod 
with which he performed miracles, and which he could change into a 
serpent at pleasure. He passed the Red Sea dry-shod, at the head of 
his army. He divided the waters of the rivers Orontes and Hydaspus, 

• From rnto to draw out or forth*— H Because she said, jnrwa— I drew kirn 
ow*."-— Exod. ii. 10. 
t Aiftwp— Bacchi cognomen. 



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PROMETHEUS. 179 

by the touch of his rod, and passed through them dry-shod. By the 
same mighty wand, he drew water from the rock ; and wherever he 
marched, the land flowed with wine, milk, and honey." 

The Indian nations were believed to have been entirely involved in 
darkness till the light of Bacchus shone on them. 

Homer relates, how in a wrestling match with Pallus, Bacchus 
yielded the victory ;* and Pausanias, that when the Greeks had taken 
Troy, they found a box which contained an image of this god, which 
Eurypilus having presumptuously ventured to look into, was imme- 
diately smitten with madness. f Why should we further prosecute this 
laborious idleness ? Demonstration can call for no more. Every part 
of the Old Testament, from first to last, is Pagan : not so much as one 
single line, containing or conveying the vestige of any idea or conceit 
whatever, find we in God's temple, but what will fit back again and 
dove-tail into its original niche in the walls of the Pantheon. — Com- 
pare the Chapter on the State of the Jews, in this Dxeqesis. 



CHAPTER XXVIII. 

PROMETHEUS — JE8U8 CHBIST. 



This was a deity who united the divine and human nature in one 
person, and was confessedly " both God and man" — " perfect God and 
perfect man, of a reasonable soul and human flesh subsisting ; equal to 
the father as touching his godhead, but inferior to the father as touch- 
ing his manhood : who, although he was God and man, yet was he not 
two, but one Prometheus ; one, not by conversion of the godhead into 
flesh, but by taking the manhood into God ; one altogether, not by con- 
fusion of substance, but by unity of person : for as the reasonable 
soul and flesh is one man, so God and man is one Prometheus : who, 
for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was 
incarnate and was made man, and was crucified also for us, under 
foece and strength ; he suffered, and descended into hell, rose again 
from the dead, he ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the right hand 
of the Father, God Almighty." 

Thus far the Pagan and the Christian eredenda ran hand in hand 
together ; and it is a more than striking coincidence, that the name 
Prometheus should be directly synonymous with the Logos, or Ward 

* Iliad, 48. t In Achais. 



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180 PROMETHEUS. 

of God, an epithet applied by St. John to the God and man, or demi- 
deity of the Gospel, from rpo, before-hand, and /*«&*, care, or counsel; 
hence directly signifying the Christian deity, Providence, which we 
see emblemized as an eye surrounded with rays of glory, and casting its 
beams of light upon the affairs of our world. Indeed, under this desig- 
nation, he continues to this day, a more fashionable deity than the 
Logos of St. John. We find acknowledgments of dependence on 
Divine Providence, and the blessing of Providence, or Prometheus, 
spoken of in our British parliament, occurring in his majesty's speeches! 
and received with the most respectful sentiment from one end of the 
kingdom to the other, where the introduction of the name of Jesus 
Christ, in the place of that of Prometheus, or Providence, would be 
received with an universal smirk of undisguised contempt. 

The best information of the character, attributes, and actions of this 
deity, is to be derived from the beautiful tragedy of npo/ntSeus A&rptms, 
or Prometheus Bound, of iEschylus,* which was acted in the theatre of 
Athens, 500 years before the Christian era, and is by many considered 
to be the most ancient dramatic poem now in existence. The plot was 
derived from materials even at that time of an infinitely remote anti- 
quity. Nothing was ever so exquisitely calculated to work upon the 
feelings of the spectator. No author ever displayed greater powers of 
poetry, with equal strength of judgment, in supporting through the 
piece the august character of the divine sufferer. The spectators them- 
selves were unconsciously made a party to the interest of the scene: its 
hero was their friend, their benefactor, their creator, and their saviour; 
his wrongs were incurred in their quarrel — his sorrows were endured 
for their salvation ; " he was wounded for their transgressions, and 
bruised for their iniquities ; the chastisement of their peace was upon 
him, and by his stripes they were healed," (Isaiah liii. 5). " He was 
oppressed and afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth." The majesty 
of his silence, whilst the ministers of an offended God were nailing him 
by the hands and feet to Mount Caucasus, could be only equalled by 
the modesty with which he relates, while hanging on the cross.f his 
services to the human race, which had brought on him that horrible 
crucifixion •— 

u I will speak, 
Not as upbraiding them, but my own gifts 
Commending. Twaa I who brought sweet hope 

* Or Potter's beautiful translation of it, of which I here avail myself, 
t The cross referring to the attitude of the sufferer, Prometheus may be called 
£<TT«t>pwju£ wj, or ayfarxoXovtc7Aiyo{, as well as Jesus. 



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PROMETHEUS 181 

T'irhabit in their hearts — I brought 

The fire of heaven to animate their clay : 

And through the clouds of barbarous ignorance 

Diffused the beams of knowledge. In a word, 

Prometheus taught each useful art to man.*' 
In answer to a call made on Lira, to explain how his philanthropy 
could have incurred such a terrible punishment, he proceeds : — 
" See what, a god, 1 suffer from the gods ! 

For mercy to mankind, I am not deemed 

Worthy of mercy; but in this uncouth 

Appointment, am fixed here, 

A spectacle dishonourable to Jove ! 

On the throne of heaven scarce was he seated, 

On the powers of heaven 

He showered his various benefits, thereby 

Confirming his sovereignty; but for unhappy mortals 

Had no regard, but all the present race 

Willed to extirpate, and to form anew. 

None, save myself, opposed his will. I dared. 

And boldly pleading, saved them from destruction- 
Saved them from sinking to the realms of night; 

For which offence, I bow beneath these pains, 

Dreadful to suffer, piteous to behold! 
In the catastrophe of the plot, his especially professed friend, 
Oceanus, the Fisherman, as his name Petrous indicates, (Petrous 
was an interchangeable synonyme of the name Oceanus), being unable 
to prevail on him to make his peace with Jupiter, by throwing the cause 
of human redemption out of his hands,* "forsook him and fled." None 
remained to be witnesses of his dying agonies, but the chorus of 
ever-amiable and ever-faithful women which also bewailed and lamented 
him, (Luke xxiii. 27.) but were unable to subdue his inflexible philan- 
thropy. Overcome at length, by the intensity of his pains, he cursed 
Jupiter in language hardly different in terms, and but little inferior in 
sublimity to the " Eloi, Eloi, lama aabacthani /" of the Gospel. And 
immediately the whole frame of nature became convulsed : the earth 
shook, the rocks rent, the graves were opened ; and in a storm that 
seemed to threaten the dissolution of the universe, the curtain fell on 
the sublimest scene ever presented to the contemplation of the human 
eye— a Dying God ! The Christian muse has inspired our modern 
poets with no strains on this theme, but such as bear the character of 
plagiarism, parody, or paraphrase on the Greek tragedy. A worshipper 

4 Then Peter took him, and began to rebuke him, saying, " Be it far from 
thee, Lord : this shall not be unto thee."— Matt. xvi. 22. 



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ISt PROMETHEUS. 

of Prometheus would look in vain through all our collections of sacred 
poetry for a single idea which his own forms of piety had not suggested, 
or a single phrase whose reference would not seem to him, to have as 
direct an application to the god-man of JEschylus. as to the Jesus of 
the Evangelists : 

" Lo> streaming from the fatal tree, 
His all-atoning blood ! 

Is this the infinite ? Ti&. he — 
Prometheus, and a God ! 

Well might the sun in darkness hide. 
And veil his glories in, 

When God, the great Prometheus, died, 
For man, the creature's sin." 
The preternatural darkness which attended the crucifixion of Pro- 
metheus, was natural enough as exhibited on the stage, and is beauti- 
fully described in the language of the tragedy. Nor is there any diffi- 
culty in conceiving, that when the mighty effect of so deep a tragedy on 
the feelings and sentiments of the audience, became an inexhaustible 
source of wealth to the performers, there would be found those who 
would be shrewd enough to discover the policy of enhancing and 
perpetuating so profitable an impression on the vulgar mind, by main- 
taining that there was much more than a mere show in the business ; that 
it was an exhibition of circumstances that had really happened ; that 
Prometheus was a real personage, and had actually done, and suffered, 
and spoken as in so lively a manner had been set before them ; that the 
tragedy was a gospel put into metre ; and that nothing but " an evil 
heart of unbelief 9 could induce any man to doubt " the certainty of 
those things wherein he had been instructed." It is probably no more 
than a figure of speech, though certainly very injudiciously chosen, is 
which Origen calls the crucifixion of Christ the most awful tragedy 
that was ever acted.* 

But the pretence of the reality of the event would break downy in the 
judgment of the better informed, from the total want of evidence to 
support that part of the detail, which, had it been real, could not have 
wanted the clearest and most constraining demonstration. The dark- 

* His answer to Celsus, chapter 27. What other than this is the sense of 
those words of the apostolic chief of sinners, " O foolish Galatians, who hath 
bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ 
hath been evidently set forth crucified among, you?" — Gal. iii. 1. Surely, i» 
was not in the country of the Galatians that Christ was crucified ; nor could he 
have been set forth before their eyes, and evidently, otherwise thai by a picture, 
or in a theatrical representation ! 



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PROMETHEUS. 181 

ness which closed the scene on the suffering Prometheus, was easily 
exhibited on the stage, by putting out the lamps ; but when the tragedy 
was to become history, and the fiction to be turned into fact, the lamp 
of day could not be so easily disposed of. Nor can it be denied that 
the miraculous darkness which the Evangelists so solemnly declare to 
have attended the crucifixion of Christ, labours under precisely the 
same fatality of an absolute and total want of evidence. 

Gibbon, in his usual strain of sarcasm and irony, keenly asks, " How 
shall we excuse the supine inattention of the pagan and philosophic 
world to those evidences which were presented by the hand of Omni- 
potence, not to their reason, but to their senses? This miraculous 
event, which ought to have excited the wonder, the curiosity, and the 
devotion of mankind, passed without notice in an age of science and 
history. It happened during the life-time of Seneca and the elder 
Pliny, who must have experienced the immediate effects, or received 
the earliest intelligence of the prodigy. Each of these philosophers, in 
a laborious work, has recorded all the great phenomena of nature — 
earthquakes, meteors, comets, and eclipses, which his indefatigable 
cariosity could collect ; both the one and the other have omitted to 
mention the greatest phenomenon to which the mortal eye has been 
witness since the creation of the globe." — Gibbon, vol. 2, ch. 15, p. 
379. 

This objection of Gibbon is answered by Bishop Watson, in a double- 
entendre paragraph, which opens with the curious word to the wise, that 
" though he was aware that he was liable to be misunderstood in what 
he was going to say, yet Mr. Gibbon would not misunderstand him." 
Then follows the most extraordinary declaration of his own, (a bishop's) 
faith, " that however mysterious the darkness at the crucifixion might 
have been, he had no doubt the power of God was as much concerned 
in its production, as it was in the opening of the graves, and the resur- 
rection of the dead bodies of the saints that slept, which accompanied 
that darkness." — Third letter to Gibbon, last paragraph. Another 
way of saying, that every sensible man must perceive that one part of 
the story was just as probable as the other, or that it was a romance al- 
together. The good bishop ventured to trust his security to the well- 
proved truth of the adage, " None are so blind as those who will not 
see." 

The immoral and mischievous tendency of the doctrine of atone- 
ment for sin, so acceptable to guilty minds, and so eagerly embraced by 
the greatest monsters of iniquity, had been preached by self-interested 
priests, and reprobated by aU who wished well to mankind, long before 



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184 PROMETHEUS. 

that doctrine was deduced from the Christian Scriptures, long before 
those Scriptures are pretended to have been written. 

Before the period assigned to the birth of Christ, the poet Ovid had 
assailed the demoralizing delusion with the most powerful shafts of 
philosophic scorn : 

I" Cum sis ipse nocens, moritur cur rictima pro te ? 
Stultitiaest morte alterius sperare salutem. 

" When thou thyself art guilty, why should a victim die for thee? 
What folly is it to expect salvation from the death of another ." 

No particle of difficulty remains, then, in accounting for the fact, that 
in that portion of the Acts of the Apostles in which the miraculous 
style is discontinued, and we so clearly trace the probable and most 
likely real adventures or journal of a missionary sent out from the 
college of the Egyptian Therapeuts joined on as an appendix to some 
fragment of their sacred legends which detailed the mystical adventures 
of the supposed first founders of their order, whose example the mis- 
sionary was to have continually before him 9 , — we should read that 
when the apostolic Therapeut attempted to preach his doctrine of 
" Jesus Christ and him crucified," at Athens, he found that the Athe- 
nians were already in possession of all he had to communicate, and 
that what he was endeavouring to set off as a doctrine newly revealed, 
was with them a very old story. He brought to their ears " no new 
thing,"f The Epicurean and stoical philosophers were more at home 
than himself upon that subject, and called him " a babbler" the very 
term that most expressively designates the character of a doting igno- 
ramus, who, in the arrogance of his own conceit, will be for ever foist- 
ing up old stories of a hundred thousand years standing, and swearing 
that they had occurred in his own experience, and had happened to 
nobody else but some particular acquaintances of his. 

The majority, however, carried the vote that he should have a fair 
hearing, and Paul was allowed to preach in the Areopagus. The pre- 
vious rebuke he had received had completely subdued his impertinence; 
he no more presumed to lay claim to originality in the crucifying 
story. He preached pure Deism, quoted their own poets, and ven- 
tured not once so much as to name his Jesus, or to make an allusion 
that could be construed as referring to him rather than to any other of 

• This appendix commences in the 13th chapter, where we find Saul in the 
mission at Antioch, and preaching again, one of the sermons which had been 
before ascribed to ^eter. 

f Acts.xvii. 18. 



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PROMETHEUS. t» 

the god-men or man-gods who had risen from the dead as well as he 
(Acts xvii). 

Pbomethbus, exactly answering to the Christian personification 
Providence, is, like that personification, used sometimes as an epithet 
synonymous with the Supreme Deity himself*. The Pagan phrase, 
" Thank Prometheus," like the Christian one, « Thank Providence," 
its literal interpretation, meant exactly the same as " Thank GodF 
Thus in The Oupbxc Hymn to Chronus or Saturn,* we have* this sub- 
lime address to the Supreme Deity under his name Prometheus, " Illus- 
trious, cherishing Father, both of the immortal gods and of men, 
various of counsel,! spotless, powerful, mighty Titan, who consumest 
all things, and again thyself repairest them, who holdest the ineffable 
bands throughout the boundless world ; thou universal parent of suc- 
cessive being, various in design, fructifier of the earth and of the starry 
heaven, dbead Prometheus, who dwellest in all parts of the world, 
author of generation, tortuous in counsel, most excellent, hear our 
suppliant voice, and send our life a happy blameless end." Amen ! 



CHAPTER XXIX. 

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. 



The urns was worshipped as a god by the inhabitants of the countries 
fertilized by its inundations, before all records of human opinions or 
actions. Plato, who flourished 348 years before the Christian era, records 
that the Egyptian priests had pointed out to him on their pyramids the 
symbolical hieroglyphics ©fa religion which had existed in uninterrupted 

• See the original in Eschenbachius's edit. p. 110. Compare also my learned 
and amiable friend's edition in original Greek inscription types, cast at his own 
expence 

t The three similar epithets, « Various of counsel," " Various in design." 
" Tortuous in counsel," would justify the doctrine, that the whole Trinity was 
comprehended in this " Prometheus the power of God, and Prometheus the 
wisdom of God/' (1 Cor. i. 24.) "His name shall be called, Wonderful 
Counsellor, The mighty God." (Isa. ix. 6.) Lactantius admits, that though 
what the poets delivered concerning the creation of man was corrupted, it was 
not different in effect from the truth as held by Christians ; for in that they 
have asserted that man was created oat of clay by Prometheus, they were not 
wrong as to the feet, but only as to the name of the Creator.— Lac t ant. Instil. 
lib.ii. c. 10. — Kortholto Pagano Obtreetator* [ Citante p. 34. 

24 AA 



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1*6 THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. 

orthodoxy among them for upwards of ten thousand years* Nor 
has the progress of Christianity or civilization, even at this day, entirely 
abolished the religious honours paid to this king of streams. The priests 
called the Cophtes still think that they " sanctify its waters to the mys- 
tical washing away of sin," by throwing into it some beads or some 
hits of a cross ; as in our own baptismal service in the church of Eng- 
land at this day, the priest spreads his hand over the font, and uses the 
words, " Sanctify this water to the mystical washing away of sin ;" and 
then sprinkling the water so sanctified in the child's face, and making 
the sign of the cross upon its forehead, he adds, " We do sign him with 
the sign of the cross," &c. 



THE SIGN OF THE CBOSS ENTIBELY PAGAN. 

The holy father Minucius Felix, in his Octavius, written as early as 
the year 211, indignantly resents the supposition that the sign of the 
cross should be considered as exclusively a Christian symbol; and 
represents his advocate of the Christian argument, as retorting on an 
infidel opponent, " As for the adoration of crosses, which you object 
against us, I must tell you, that we neither adore crosses nor desire 
them ; you it is, ye Pagans, who worship wooden gods, who are the 
most likely people to adore wooden crosses, as being parts of the same 
substance with your deities. For what else are your ensigns, flags, and 
standards, but crosses gilt and beautified. Your victorious trophies 
not only represent a simple cross, but a cross with a man upon it. The 
sign of a cross naturally appears in a ship, either when she is under 
sail, or rowed with expanded oars like the palm of our hands. Not a 
jugum erected but exhibits the sign of a crosf; and when a pure wor- 
shipper adores the true God, with hands extended, he makes the same 
figure. Thus you see that the sign of the cross has either some foun- 
dation in nature, or in your own religion, and therefore ought not to be 
objected against Christians."* 

Meagher, a Popish priest, who came over from the Roman Catholic 
communion, and attached himself, (for what reasons, or with what mo- 
tives, must rest with himself alone) to the ministry of the church of 
England, furnishes us with a most satisfactory prototype of what he had 

* Reeve's Apologies of the Fathers, &c. vol. 1, p. 139. This Reverend Mr. 
Reeves is unquestionable authority for the text of the orthodox Fathers ; in 
which he could not be wrong. We may be allowed however to question his 
authority, where he would persuade us that, all the heretics ate children. 



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TUB SIGN OF THE CROSS. IsT 

come at last to consider as a corrupt Christianity, in the idolatrous 
worship of the Nile. The ignorant gratitude of a superstitious people, 
while they adored the river on whose inundations the fertility of their 
provinces depended, could not fail of attaching notions of sanctity and 
holiness to the posts that were erected along its course, and which, by 
a transverse beam, indicated the height to which, at the spot where the 
beam was fixed, the waters might be expected to rise. This cross at 
once warned the traveller to secure his safety, and formed a standard 01 
a transverse beam, indicated the height to which, at the spot where the 
beam was fixed, the waters might be expected to rise. This cross at 
once warned the traveller to secure his safety, and formed a standard of 
the value of land. Other rivers may add to the fertility of the 
country through which they pass, but the Nile is the absolute cause of 
that great fertility of the Lower -Egypt, which would be all a desert, as 
bad as the most sandy parts of Africa, without this river. It supplies 
it both with soil and moisture, and was therefore gratefully addressed, 
not merely as an ordinary river-god, but by its express title of the 
Egyptian Jupiter. The crosses, therefore, along the banks of the 
river, would naturally share in the honour of the stream, and be the 
most expressive emblem of good fortune, peace, and plenty. The two 
ideas could never be separated : the fertilizing flood was the waters of 
life, that conveyed every blessing, and even existence itself, to the 
provinces through which they flowed. 

One other and most obvious hieroglyph completed the expressive 
allegory : The Demon of Famine, who, should the waters fail of their 
inundation, or not reach the elevation indicated by the position of the 
transverse beam upon the upright, would reign in all his horrors over 
their desolated lands. This symbolical personification was, therefore, 
represented as a miserable emaciated wretch, who had grown up "as a 
tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground, who had no form nor 
comeliness; and when they should see him, there was no beauty that 
they should desire him." Meagre were his looks ; sharp misery had 
worn him to the bone. His crown of thorns indicated the sterility of 
the territories over which he reigned. The reed in his hand, gathered 
from the banks of the Nile, indicated, that it was only the mighty river, 
by keeping within its banks, and thus withholding its wonted muni- 
ficence, that placed an unreal sceptre in his gripe. He was nailed to 
the cross, in indication of his entire defeat; and the superscription of 
his infamous title, " This is thb kino of the Jews," expressively 
indicated, that Famine, Want, or Poverty, ruled the destinies of the 
most slavish, beggarly, and mean-spirited race of men with whom they 
had the honour of being acquainted. 



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188 TOE SIGN OF THE CROSS* 

Madame Dacier, in her edition of Plato, quotes authorities in proof 
that, when Plato visited Egypt, the priests showed him the symbols of 
a religion which, they alleged had continued in observance among 
their ancestors for upwards of ten thousand years. 

From the way in which it was apparent to M. Dupuis, that the my- 
thologies and astronomical allegories of the ancients were connected 
with the periodical return of the seasons, he was induced to suppose 
that they must have originated in Egypt, where the annual inundation 
or deluge was marked in so peculiar a manner ; and all ecclesiastical 
indications, it must be admitted, point to Egypt, as the birth-place and 
cradle of Religion. But it has happened not to occur to the reflec- 
tions of M. Dupuis, nor to ecclesiastical writers, that with the variation 
of a few weeks only, the Ganges and the Indus produce precisely 
similar phenomena to those of the Nile. And it is in a very peculiar 
manner worthy of consideration, that a colony from India arriving in 
Egypt, so far from finding their country's superstition discouraged by 
dissimilarity of circumstances, would find every circumstance of season 
and climate favourable to it, tending to recal the same associations of 
idea, and to sanctify the same absurdities of practice. 

The most learned antiquaries agree in holding it unquestionable 
that Egypt was colonized from India. It received one of the earliest 
swarms of emigrants from the Bactrian hive. And thus, even if we 
had not the proof we have yet to adduce, of the actual importation by 
the monks of Alexandria, would the superstitions of India get footing 
in Egypt; the Christina of the Ganges would become the Christ of the 
Nile : and the priests be left to no better expedient to disguise the real 
origin of their allegorical figment, than by transporting him again to 
the banks of the Jordan* The first draft of the mystical adventures of 
Chrishna, as brought from India into Egypt, was The Diegxsis; the 
first version of the Diegesis was the Gospel according to thx 
Egyptians ; the first renderings out of the language of Egypt into that 
of Greece, for the purpose of imposing on the nations of Europe, were 
the apocryphal Gospels; the corrected, castigated, and authorised 
versions of these apocryphal compilations were the gospels of our four 
evangelists. 

It should never be forgotten, that the sign of the cross, for ages 
anterior to the Augustan era, was in common use among the Gentiles. 
It was the most sacred symbol of Egyptian idolatry. It is on most of 
the Egyptian obelisks, and was believed to possess all the devil-expelling 
virtues which have since been ascribed to it by Christians. The mono- 
gram, or symbol of the god Saturn, was the sign of the cross, together 
with a ram's horn, in indication of the Lamb of God. Jupiter also 



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THE SIGN OP TUB CROSS 18D 

bore a cross with a horn, Venus a cross with a circle. The famous 
Oru& ansata is to be seen in all the buildings of Egypt ; and the most 
celebrated temples of the idol Chrishna in India, like our Gothic 
cathedrals, were built in the form of crosses. 

The sign of the cross is the very mark which in Ezekiel ix. 4, the 
Lord commands his messenger to "go through the midst of Jerusalem, 
and sit upon the foreheads of the men that sigh, and that cry for aH the 
abominations that be .done in the midst thereof" But here, as in a 
thousand other places, our English rendering protestantizes, for the 
purpose of disguising the papistical sense, just as their immediate pre* 
decessors, the papists, had set them the example of christianizing what* 
ever came in their way, for the purpose of concealing the Pagan origi- 
nation. 

On a Phoenician medal found in the ruins of Citium, and engraved 
in Dr. Clarke's Travels, and proved by him to be Phoenician, are in- 
scribed not only the cross, but the rosary, or string of beads, attached 
to it, together with the identical Lamb pfOoa\ which taketh away the 
sins of the world. 

" How it came to pass," says the pious Mr. Skelton, " that the 
Egyptians, Arabians, and Indians, before Christ came among us, paid 
a remarkable veneration to the sign of the cross, is to me unknown ; 
but the fact itself is known. In some places this sign was given to men 
who had 'been accused of crime, but acquitted upon trial; and in 
Egypt it stood for the signification of eternal ftfe"* O Christian 
revelation, what is it that thou hast revealed ? 



THE CHRISTIANS, WORSHIPPERS OF THE GOD 8XRAPIS. 

Bat it is more than evidence ot tnis character that summons our 
admiration in the charge of Serapidolatry, or the worship of the god 
Serapis, which was brought against the primitive Christians, by no 
vulgar accuser, no bigotted intolerant reviler, but by that philosophic 
and truth-respecting witness, the emperor Adrian. t In a certain letter 

* Skelton s Appeal to Common Sense, p. 45 

f In Epistola quadam ad Servianum cos. Imperator Hadranus prodidit, 
coluisse ipsos in iEgypto Serapidem, sire numen illud JEgyptiorum praecissum, 
quod sub boris specie eos fuisse veneratos, nemo ignorat. llli ait qui Serapia 
cohort, Cna>STiANi«itnf,e* devoti sunt Serapi, qui te Christi Episeopos dicunt. 
—Kortholti Pagan. Obtrect. de Serapidolatria, lib. 2, c. 5, p. 324. — See this 
article at length in the chapter that adduces the testimony of the emperor Adrian. 



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m THE SION OP THE CROSS. 

which he writes, while in the course of his travels, to the Consul 
Servianus, he states that he found the worshippers of the god Serapis 
in that country distinguished by the name of Christians* " Those,'' 
he says, " who worship Serapis, are Christians; and those who are 
especially consecrated to Serapis, calls themselves the bishops of 
Christ." In relief of which charge, the learned Kortholt, from whose 
valuable work, the Paganus Obtrectator, I have taken this passage, 
pleads, and indeed it might be so, that when this emperor was in 
Egypt, some of the Christians, actuated by fear, concealing their true 
religion for a season, might have held out an appearance of having 
embraced the superstition of the Pagans. Thus in the Ancient Martyr- 
ology, in the history of Epicharmus, an Egyptian martyr, it is related 
that all the Christians in Alexandria, upon the coming of a cruel judge, 
either fled away, or pretended to be still followers of the Pagan impiety: 
and if the approach of a judge only could produce this effect, it is no 
wonder that the coming of the emperor himself, and he, as they all 
knew, being a most strenuous asserter of the Gentile superstitions, 
should have a similar effect*. In Socrates' History of Cod stan tine, 
he relates how that most holy emperor went about to promote the 
Christian religion, and to banish the rites and ceremonies of the Eth- 
nics, he set up his own image in their idolatries! temples : and finding 
that there prevailed a general belief of the people of Egypt that it was 
the god Serapis who caused the river Nile to overflow and fertilize 
their country, in honour of which a certain elk (the upright post with 
the transverse beam which had been used to measure the height and 
extent of the inundation) was annually brought with religious cere- 
monies into the temple of the god*Serapis, the emperor commanded 
that elle to be brought into the church of Alexandria. Upon this pro- 
fanation, the Egyptian people had wrought themselves up to the too- 
eritical belief, that the Nile would resent the indignity, and no more 
condescend to overflow his banks as usual ; thereby subjecting them- 
selves to a sort of miracle, which was pretty safely promised them 
beforehand ! for, behold ! on the following year the river did not only 
overflow after its wonted manner, and from that time forth kept his 
course, (O most miraculous of all miracles !) but also did thereby de- 
clare unto the world that Nilus was accustomed to overflow, not after 
their superstitious opinion, but by the secret determination of Divine 
Providence.f 

Notwithstanding, however, this adoption of the Pagan symbol of the 
cross into the Christian church, and the rapid propagation of Chris* 

* Kortholt in eodem loco. Socrates Schol. lib. 1, c* 14. 



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THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. 191 

ttanity, it was not till after the commencement of the fifth century, 
when the emperor Theodosius had given the exterminatory business, by 
commission, into the hands of Theophilus bishop of Alexandria, that it 
was completed with something like episcopal vigour. " By the pro* 
curement and industry of Theophilus the bishop, the emperor com- 
manded that all the idol groves of the Ethnics within Alexandria should 
down to the ground, and that Theophilus should oversee it. The- 
ophilus, being thus authorized, omitted nothing that might tend to the 
reproach and contumely of heathenish ceremonies: down goes the 
temple of Mithra, with all its idolatrical filth and superstition : down 
goes the god Serapis ; their embrued and bloody mysteries are pub- 
hcly derided ; their vain and ridiculous practices are publicly ridiculed 
in the open market-place, to their utter shame and ignominy/'* I 
need not continue this hideous passage through the description which 
follows, and was sure to follow, of the sanguinary horrors in which it 
issued. 

To deny that Christianity was and hath been the religion of the 
sword from first to last, and hath been propagated and sustained by 
means of violence and fraud, and by. no other means, or to assert that 
there ever was on earth, or could have been any other religion that 
ever made its professors of all sorts and in all ages, one half so savage, 
so bloody, and so wicked, is, as it were, to assert anything, to trample 
all evidence of fact and history under foot, to deny the existence of the, 
sun, to deny that the jury who convicted the Rev. Robert Taylor 01 
blaspheming their Lord Jesus Christ " by forge and arms," were a 
perjured jury, to deny that there is any gaol at Oakham, any innocent 
man in that gaol, or truth in truth itself. 



THE SIGN OF THE CROSS FOUND IN THE TEMPLE OF SERAPIS. 

" In the temple of Serapis, now overthrown and rifled throughout, 
\ there were found engraven in the stones certain letters which they call 
hieroglyphical ; the manner of their engraving resembled the form of 
the cross. The which, when both Christians and Ethnics beheld before 
them, every one applied them to his proper religion. The Christians 
affirmed that the cross was a sign or token of the passion of Christ, and 
the proper symbol of their profession. The Ethnics avouched that 
. therein was contained something in common, belonging as well to 
Serapis as to Christ ; and that the sign of the cross signified one thing 

* Socrates Schol lib. 5, c. 16. 



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m THE SIGN OF THE CROSS. 

onto the Ethnics, and another to the Christians. While they contended 
thus about the meaning of these hieroglyphical letters,* many of the 
Ethnics became Christians, for they perceived at length the sense and 
meaning of those letters, and that they prognosticated salvation, and 

UFB TO COMK,"t 

This most important evidence of the utter indifference between 
Christianity and any, even the grossest forms of the ancient Paganism, 
is supplied by a Christian historian ; and independent of its fairness, as 
taken from such a source, and its inherent verisimilitude, is corro- 
borated by a parallel passage from the ecclesiastical history of Sozo* 
menes, who, about the year 443, wrote the history of the church from 
the reign of Constantino the Great to that of the younger Theodosius. 
He is speaking of the temple of the god SerapisJ— " It is reported that 
when this temple was destroyed, there appeared some of those charac- 
ters called hieroglyphics, surrounding the sign of the cross, in engraven 
stones ; and that, by the skilful in these matters, these hieroglyphics 
were held to have signified this inscription— the mf* to come ! And 
this became a pretence for becoming Christians to many of the Gre- 
cians, because there were even other letters which signified this sacred 
end when this character appeared." • 

Thus in every genuine historical document, we are continually met 
by evidence of the superfluous prodigality of miracles, and that offence 
against the laws of the drama, as well as of historical probability, which 

• We see at this day, without any countenance of Scripture, the letters I.N.RJ. 
engraved in all our idolatrical representations of the crucifixion. It is obvious 
that they would bear any other reading as well as that which Christian conceit 
may give them. 

f EfZt tu tauf rov EcpownJof tooprvov, xot* yvpyovptfov, mipirro ypotppara tyxt- 
%atpay/AEyat twj A*9qk,tw xaXoupuw tcpoyXv$ixw. How it o» %apaxTiipf; OTavpwt 
ivorrf j Tiwwj. Toutowj opwref Xpwrtayot ti xou EXXwc;, rn ^uc ixarcpot 
SpwxEta srpoempjuo^oyTO XpKnrayo* /xcy yap <rnpn<» rov xara Xf wrov o-jtrruptaitti* 
irctdou; hvou Xvyovrii rev orowpoy, oixuo* uvou Toy %apaxn»pa iw/xi£o». EXXwk 
£f ri koivov Xpt0Tu> xcu Sipaw* $uMroi> u o orowposiJiiff vapaxTup, aXXo /aep 
XptfTMMtttf, aXXo li EXAw votctTM to avufioXoy. Tovrwy Si a^urfinrnffjafm, 
ru t^ *** EAAwwy t« XpiOTfayw/Aw 4rpo0ixdorrs;, t« iEpoyXv$txa ti ypajx/*ar« 
wwra/niyo*, &Epf*uyEV©yTE$ to» aroM/pos»J»i ^»paxTUp*. EXiyof ?4/Aauycfty % f«n» 
Ertp^opEyfiy — Socrdt. EccL Hist. lib. 5, c. 17. 

J« $*o-i di rov faov xadaipou/bbEyou rourov, t*w» twi xaAovpcwy ^apawnjpwf, 
crcwpiM. crnpuv i/A^tpu$, iyxsxatpayjAEvot; to*j Xtdoi; aya$ay»pa». Ilap E«*i0Titftowify 
dt t« rotaJf ip*A»jyivd«orwy(rfjftay<w Towruf TUf ypa^ny ZflHN EIIEPXOMENHN 
tovto di Tpo$aw»y XpioTifltyw/Aov voXXok ywEO'S'a* r»r iXX*jy*OT«t: xador* xai 
yp«/A/xaT« iripa tovto to tipo* tiAoj f £iot» ioSiaov, wixa ovtos o %ap*ATfip $*»*.— 
Lib: 2, cap. 15. 



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TUB SIGN OF THE CROSS. 193 

makes a god appear where there was no knot worthy of a god. The 
Pagans, so far from needing miracles to convert them, were at all times 
ready to embrace any new faith whatever: no trick could be too gross 
to fail of success on their easy credulity. They, really had not the 
capacity of inflicting martyrdom ; they were ready to be winked and 
whistled into Christianity. — Socrates continues his account : 

" The Christians perceiving that this made very much for their 
religion, made great account thereof, and were not a little proud of it. 
When as by other hieroglyphical letters it was gathered, that the 
temple of Serapis should go to ruin when the sign of the cross therein 
engraven came to light (by that life to come was foreshewed), many 
more embraced the Christian religion, confessed their sins and were 
baptized. Thus much I have learned of the cross."* — And thus far 
quote I from the Ecclesiastical History of Socrates, a Christian historian 
who lived and wrote about a.d. 412, the contemporary of Damasus 
bishop of Rome, of Chrysostom of Constantinople, and of the events 
which he has here recorded. Though the god Serapis stood in so 
immediate a relation to the Nile, his worship was by no means confined 
to Egypt ; he was worshipped not only in Egypt and in Greece, but 
also at Rome, and sometimes considered as one and the same as Jupiter 
Ammon, sometimes as identical with Pluto, Bacchus, JEsculapius, 
Osiris,')' an( * Jesus Christ. It is certain, however, that his most mag- 
nificent temple was at Alexandria in Egypt, whence all our most dis- 
tinguished Christian Fathers and writers derived their education ; that 
the bishops of Serapis, as they alone were justly entitled to be called 
bishops of Alexandria, while Alexandria was a Pagan city, yet called 
themselves bishops of Christ ; and though Christianity can in no rea- 
sonable sense be said to have been established in Alexandria while the 
temple of Serapis remained — and Tillemont admits that the very first 
Christian church that was ever built, of which history gives us any 
certain and express information, was founded by Gregory the wonder- 
worker, a.d. 244, or after that time,} — yet have we an uninterrupted 
succession of bishops of Alexandria from the evangelist Mark, who we 
are required to believe was the first of them, downwards. The Jews, 
it seems, took Serapis to be identical with the patriarch Joseph the 
son of Sarah.§ 

In all the representations of the crucified King of the Jews that have 

* Lib. 5, c. 18, p. 348. Londoni Ed. anno. 1649. 
t Pomey De Diis Indiget, p. 268. 
J Quoted in Lardner's Credibility, vol. i, p. 594 
§ Quasi Zapai axo. 

25 2 b 



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194 THE TAURIBOLIA. 

come down to us, the essential requisites of the Egyptian hieroglyphic 
have been most religiously preserved. The ribs of the figure are 
almost breaking through his skin, and it seems doubtful whether the 
being so represented had died of hunger before he was nailed to the 
cross, or had expired under the inconvenience of that uncouth appoint- 
ment. But the most extraordinary phenomenon attending this mys- 
tical personification is, that his hieroglyphical history will be found to 
dove-tail exactly into all the various and apparently contradictory 
developments of the Christian theology. Thus the cross was blessed, 
but the figure upon it was made a curse; and accordingly, as it was 
the cross, or the crucified, that was referred to, so shall we find it, even 
in the same writings, spoken of as the blessed cross or the accursed 
cross, as a badge of honour or of shame, of joy or of sorrow, of triumph 
or of humiliation. 



CHAPTER XXX. 

THB TAUBDBOLIA 



Weue expiatory sacrifices, which were renewed every twenty years, 
and conferred the highest degree of holiness and sanctitication on the 
partakers of those holy mysteries. Frudentius informs us, that in these 
religious ceremonies the Pagan priests, or whoever was ambitious of 
obtaining a mystical regeneration, excavated a pit, into which he 
descended. The pit was then covered over with planks, which were 
bored full of holes, so that the blood and what-not of the goat, bull or 
ram that was sacrificed upon them might trickle through the holes upon 
the body of the person beneath ; who having been thus sanctified, 
and born again, was obliged ever after to walk in newness of life ; to 
maintain a conduct of the most inflexible virtue; to shew forth God** 
praise, not only with his lips, but in his life, by giving up himself to 
God's service; and by walking before him in holiness and righteous- 
ness all his days. 

Potter, however, in his Antiquities, informs us, that the Athenians 
had a less offensive way than this to convert the spiritual blessedness of 
regeneration. The person desirous of it, whether male or female, was 
slipped through a characteristic part of the female habiliments, and 
thenceforth recognized as one who had been born again. The only ob- 
servable coincidence of the Tauribolia with the great sacrifice of Chris- 



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BAPTISM. 195 

tianity, consists in the fact, that the grossest sense of the terms in 
which the Pagan obscenity can be described, finds its excuse, if not its 
sanctification, by its adoption into the text of our New Testament, 
where we read of "the blood of sprinkling, that speaheth better things 
than the blood of Abel" (Heb. xii. 24.) ; and " sfbinklino of the 
blood of Jesus Christ," (1 Pet. i. 2). " And if the blood of bulls and 
goats, and the what-not of an heifer, sfbinklino the unclean, sancti- 
fieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of 
Christ purge your consciences." 

Thus precisely the same effects of an imaginary spiritual regeneration 
are ascribed to precisely the same nasty ingredients — bloody <£c. — used 
in precisely the same mode of application — sprinkling. It may be that 
we, of more civilized times, and more exalted ideas, have acquired the 
art of producing refined sweets out of these grossnesses ; but we have 
no right to forget that our chemistry was entirely unknown to those 
to whom this language was at first propounded. They who were to be 
converted by it from their Paganism into the new religion, must have 
had the one put upon them in the place of the other, without their ever 
being able to perceive the difference. 



CHAPTER XXXI. 



BAPTISM. 



The Baptse, or Baptists, were an effeminate and debauched order of 
priests, belonging to the goddess Cotytto, the unchaste Venus, in oppo- 
sition and contra-distinction to the celestial deity of that name, who 
was ever attended with the Graces, and whose worship tended to 
elevate and exalt the moral character, and to sanctify the commerce of 
generation with all that is delicate in sentiment and tender in affection. 
No worshipper of Venus could endure the thought of impurity. Neglect 
of the holiness which her rites enjoined was ever punished with degra- 
dation of mind and loss of beauty and health.* The Baptists are 
satirized by Juvenal. They take their name from their stated dippings 

• The man after God's own heart exhibits himself as an awful instance of the 
vengeance of Venus on one who turned the grace of God (for Venus was ad- 
dressed, "Be thou God," or Goddess) into lasci viousness : " My wounds stink 
and are corrupt, through my lasci viousness; " neither is there any rest in my 
bones, by reason of my sin." — Psalm xxxviii. 



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196 BAPTIST. 

and washings, by way of purification, though it seems they were dipped 
in warm water, and were to be made clean and pure, that they might 
wallow and defile themselves the more, aa their nocturnal rites 
consisted chiefly of lascivious dances and other abominations. The 
Baptists, or Anabaptists, as they are called, continue as an order ot 
religionists among Christians, under precisely the same name. The 
licentious character of the order of religionists from whom they are 
descended, has received its correction from the improved intelligence, 
and consequently, improved morality of the times. But the most un- 
questionable evidence confirms the fact, that the Christian Baptists 
of Germany, in the fourteenth century, and sometime before and after, 
came short of no impurities that could have characterized the Anti- 
nomian priests of Cotytto. 



ASTROLOGICAL CHABACTER OF JOHN THE BAPTIST 

The character of John the Baptist, like all the other personages of 
the Gospel story, presents precisely the same analogy to the system of 
astronomy which we trace in every personification of the ancient hea- 
thenism. Like all the other genii or saints, he presides over his par- 
ticular day, or rather, in . mythological language, is that day ; and, as 
if no room for doubt as to his identity should be left the calendars 
attached to our church of England prayer-book have fixed that day as 
the 24th of June, the season peculiarly adapted to baptisms or bath' 
ings, precisely the day on which the sun has exhibited one degree of 
descent from his highest elevation, and which stands directly over and 
looks down upon the 25th of December, the day fixed for the birth of 
Christ, when he first appears to have gained one degree of ascent from 
his lowest declension. In exact accordance with which astronomical 
positions, we find the genius of the 24th of June (St. John) looking 
down upon the genius of the 25th of December (the new born Jesus), 
and saying, " He must increase, but I must decrease," (John iii. 30), 
as the days begin to lengthen from the 25th of December, and to de- 
crease or shorten from the 24th of June downwards, till they reach the 
shortest, of which the genius or saint is the unbelieving Thomas. 

The learned and ingenious historian of the Celtic Druids, of whose 
labours I have greaty availed myself, maintains that " the Essenes 
were descended from the prophet Elijah, and the Carmelite monks 
from the Essenes, whose monasteries were established before the 
Christian era ; that these monks, finding that from time immemorial, a 



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BAPTISTS. 197 

certain day had been held sacred to the god Sol, the Sun, as his birth- 
day, and that this god was distinguished by the epithet The Lord, 
persuaded themselves that this Lord could be no other than their 
Lord God : whereupon they adopted the religious rites of this Lord, 
and his supposed birth-day, December the 25th, became a Christian 
festival, Paganism being thus spliced and amalgated into Christianity ." 
I only take the liberty of differing from this good Christian writer so 
far as to deny that there could be any splicing or amalgamation, where 
it was all one piece. The great sophism of Christianity consists in the 
pretence of a distinction where there was no difference. 



ST. THOMAS 

Stands on the 21st of December, in all the darkness of unbelief, and 
doubting whether his divine master, the sun, will ever rise again. In 
accordance with which astronomical sense, and in no other sense that 
divines can agree upon, we find Jesus, the genius of the Sun, in the 
25th of December, telling the Pharisees, " Your father Abraham 
rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad." (John 
viii. 56.) It was the evident object of the writers of the sacred allegory, 
as it was of the mystagogues and contrivers of the Pagan system, to 
give an appearance of real personages, and of actual adventures and 
discourses, to the prosopopeia, under which they emblemized physical 
and moral truths. So that it is only incidentally, and when they 
are somewhat off their guard, that they let rail expressions entirely out 
of keeping with their general tenor ; and furnish to a wary observance, 
toe key to the occult and real sense which eludes, and was intended to 
elude the tractable simplicity of the faithful. At the same time, nothing 
is more obvious, than that the failure of invention, or fissures in the 
weaving of the allegory, would be from time to time patched up with 
pieces of real circumstances, actual adventures, and indistinct reminis- 
cences of conversations that had indeed occurred ; till the fabricators 
themselves had become unable to distinguish what they had remem- 
bered from what they had invented. But who, but one who held it a 
virtue to be stupid, could drop the clue to the allegory put into his 
hand by such passages as (Eph. iv. 9), " Now that he ascended, what 
is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth $ 
He that descended is the same also that ascended ? This descent into 
the lower parts of the earth, will apply to no sense of the actual burial 
of a man upon a level with the earth's surface, or not ten feet below it, 
but is strictly applicable to the sun's descent below the horizon, by an 



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198 BAPTISTS. 

equable division of day and night, " to give light to them that sit in 
darkness, and in the valley of the shadow of death." 

The Pagan philosophers pretended that their theology, and the gene- 
alogy of their gods, did originally, in an allegorical sense, mean the 
several parts of nature and the universe. Cicero gives a large account 
of this, and tells us, that even the impious fables relating to the deities 
include in them a good physical meaning. Thus, when Saturn was 
said to have devoured his children, it was to be understood of Time, 
which is properly said to devour all things. " We know," says this 
great heathen, " that the shapes of all the gods, their age, habits, and 
ornaments, nay, their very genealogy, marriages, and every thing relat- 
ing to them, hath been delivered in the exact resemblance to human 
weakness. It is," he adds, " the height of folly to believe such absurd 
-and extravagant things/' 

Did any of them ever believe any thing more absurd ? Did the 
annals of human folly or madness ever record any thing more extra- 
vagant, than that new born children should be considered to have 
offended God, or that a full grown fool should be believed to please him, 
by washing his dirty hide, and suffering a gawky idiot to talk nonsense 
over the ceremony? 

As an allegorical sense was the apology offered for the manifest 
absurdities of Paganism, and an allegorical sense is challenged for the 
contents of the New Testament, not only by the early Fathers, but by 
and in the text of that New Testament itself* can it be denied that 
both alike are allegorical ? And both being confessedly allegorical, the 
innumerable instances of perfect resemblance between them are a com- 
petent proof that the one is but a modification or improved edition of 
the other, and that there never was any real or essential difference 
between them. 



CHARTER XXXIL 

THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES ; OR, SACRAMENT OP THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

Was the most august of all the Pagan ceremonies celebrated, more 
especially by the Athenians, every fifth year in honour of Ceres, the 

* " Our sufficiency is of God, who also hath made us able ministers of the 
New Testament, not of the letter, but of ,the spirit; for the letter killeth, but the 
. spirit giveth life."— 2 Cor. iir. 6. 



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THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. 199 

goddess of corn, who, in allegorical language, had given us her Jiesh 
to eat; as Bacchus, the god of wine, in a like sense, had given us his 
blood to drink ; though both these mysticisms are claimed by Jesus 
Christ, (John vi. 55.) They were celebrated every fifth year at 
Eleusis, a town of Attica, from whence their name : which name, how- 
ever, both in the word, and in the signification of it, is precisely the 
same as one of the titles of Jesus Christ.* From these ceremonies, in 
like manner, is derived the very name attached to our Christian sacra- 
ment of the Lord's supper — " those holy mysteries;" and not one or 
two, but absolutely all and every one of the observances used in our 
Christian solemnity. Very many of our forms of expression in that 
solemnity are precisely the same as those that appertained to the Pagan 
rite. Nor, notwithstanding all we hear of the rapid propagation of 
Christianity, and the conversion of Constantine, were these heathen 
mysteries abolished, till the reign of the elder Theodosius, who had the 
honour of instituting the Inquisition, which was so great an improve- 
ment upon them, in their stead, about the year 440. 

Mosheim acknowledges, that " the primitive Christiansf gave the 
name of mysteries to the institutions of the Gospel, and decorated 
particularly the holy sacrament with that title ; that they used the very 
terms employed in the heathen mysteries, and adopted some of the rites 
and ceremonies of which those renowned mysteries consisted. This 
imitation began in the eastern provinces ; but, after the time of Adrian, 
who first introduced the mysteries among the Latins, it was followed 
by the Christians who dwelt in the western parts of the empire. A 
great part, therefore, of the service of the church in this century ( the 
second) had a certain air of the heathen mysteries, and resembled them 
considerably in many particulars/ 7 

ELEUSINIAN MTSTEBIES CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT 

Compared. 

1. "But as the benefit of initia- 1. " For as the benefit is great, 

tion was great, such as were con- if, with a true penitent heart and 

victed of witchcraft, murder, even lively faith, we receive that holy 

though unintentional, or any other sacrament, &c. if any be open and 

heinous crimes, were debarred notorious evil-liver, or hath done 



* 2vu o sp^o/Aivo^ — Art thou the he that should come V 9 — John xi. 3. Ey:v<n$, 
the Advent, or coming, from the common root. 
t Mosheim. vol, 1, p. 204. 



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100 



THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES 



CHRISTIAN SACRAMENT 



ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES 

Compared. 

from those mysteries." — Bell's wrong to his neighbour, 
Panth. in toco quo res. 



2. At their entrance, purifying 
themselves by washing their hands 
in holy water, they were at the 
same time admonished to present 
themselves with pure minds, with- 
out which the external cleanness 



&c. that 
he presume not to come to the 
Lord's table." — Communion Ser- 
vice. 

2. See the fonts of holy water 
at the entrance of every catholic 
chapel in Christendom for the 
purpose. 

Let us draw near with a true 
heart, having our hearts sprinkled 



of the body would by no means be from an evil conscience, and our 
accepted. bodies washed with pure water.— 

Heb.x.22. 



3. The priests who officiated in 
these sacred solemnities, were 
called Hierophants, or revealers 
of holy things. 

4. After this, they were dis- 
missed in these words : — 

Koy{ Oftttuf . 



3. Let a man so account of us 
as of the ministers of Christ, and 
stewards of the mysteries of God. 
— 1 Cor. iv. 11. 

4. In English thus : — 
The Lord be with you. 



If it were possible to be mistaken in the signifioancy of the mono- 
gram of Bacchus, the I H S, to whose honour, in conjunction with 
Ceres, these holy mysteries were distinctively dedicated, the insertion 
of those letters in a circle of rays of glory 9 over the centre of the holy 
table, is an hieroglyphic that depends not on the fallibility of translation, 
but conveys a sense that cannot be misread by any eye on which the 
sun's light shines. I H S are Greek characters, by ignorance taken 
for Roman letters ; and Yes, which is the proper reading of those let- 
ters, is none other than the very identical name of Bacchus, that is, of 
the Sun, of which Bacchus was one of the most distinguished person- 
ifications ; and Yes, or Ies, with the Latin termination us, added to it 
is Jesus. The surrounding rays of glory, as expressive of the sun's 
light, make the identity of Christ and Bacchus as clear as the sun. 

These rays of glory are a sort of universal Jefter that cannot be misread 
or misinterpreted ; no written language, no words that man could utter, 
could so distinctly, so expressively say that it was the Sun, and nothing 
but the Sun, that was so emblemized. And these rays are seen alike sur- 
rounding the head of the Indian Cheeshna, as he is exhibited in the 



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THE BLEUSTNIAN MYSTERIES. 201 

beautiful plate engraved by Barlow, and inscribed to the Archbishop 
of Canterbury ; round the Grecian Apollo ; and in all our pictures of 
Jesus Christ. Nay, more — the epithet The Lord, as we have seen, 
was peculiarly and distinctively appropriate to the Sun, and to all 
personifications of the Sun ; so that the Sun and the Lord were per- 
fectly synonimous, and Sun's day and the Lord's day the same to 
every nation on whom his light hath shone. 

As it was especially to the honour of Bacchus, as the Sun, that the 
mysteries were celebrated, so the bread and wine which the Lord (or 
Sun) had commanded to be received, was called the Lord?* Supper. 
Throughout the whole ceremony, the name of the Lord was many times 
repeated, and his brightness or glory, not only exhibited to the eye by 
the rays which surrounded his name, but was made the peculiar theme 
or subject of their triumphaDt exultation. Now bring we up our most 
sacred Christian ordnance ! That also is designated, as the ceremony in 
honour of Bacchus was, the Lord's Supper. In that also all other 
epithets of the deity so honoured, are merged in the peculiar appro- 
priation of the term The Lord. It would sound irreverently, even in 
Christian ears, to call it Jesus's supper, or Jesus 's table ; it is always 
termed the Lord?*. And as in the Lord's supper of the ancient idol- 
aters at Eleusis, it was the benefit which they received from the sun's 
rays or glory that were commemorated, so in our Christian orgies, it is 
the glory or brightness of the same deity which is peculiarly symbolized 
and honoured. A poor Jewish peasant never was, nor could have been 
called the Lord. Let us take words according to the meaning of 
words, and not suffer our reason to be sophisticated by mere sounds, 
which have in themselves no meaning at all, and we shall see that our 
English word Glory is but a ridiculously sonorous mouthing of its 
original, Clary. The exact meaning of clary is brightness; the 
attribute of brightness is peculiarly characteristic of the Sun : use only 
the meaning of the word, instead of its unmeaning sound, wherever it 
occurs, and the heliolatrous sense and origination of our Christian 
Communion Service, and its absolute identity with the Pagan myste- 
ries of Eleusis, can no longer evade detection ; for thus run the 
Eleusinian and the Christian mysteries, like linked horses in a chariot, 
step for step, and phrase for phrase, together. 



THE DoXOLOGY. 

" Brightness be to God on high ! We praise thee, we brighten thee 
(that is, we say that thou art bright), we give thee thanks for thy 
26 * 2 c 



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802 



THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. 



great brightness. Heaven and earth are full of thy great brightness. 
Brightness be to thee, O Lord (that is, O Sun) most high !" 

Is not this the real, the only sense, of both mysteries ? If it be not, 
our ignorance has, at least, one consolation : we shall not have to 
quarrel with any body who can tell us what is ! Safe enough are we 
from any thing like an idea on the part of the partakers of those holy 
mysteries ; a sensible person who had received the sacrament, might 
be shown for a week afterwards at the menagerie. 



PAGAN MYTHOLOGY 



CHRISTIAN REVELATION 



Compared, 



1. Titan, the eldest of the chil- 
dren of heaven, yielded to Saturn 
the kingdom of the world, pro- 
vided he raised no more children ; 
but on the birth of Jupiter, he re- 
belled, and raising war in heaven, 
prevailed not, neither was his place 
found any more in heaven. He 
and all his host of rebel angels 
were cast out, and imprisoned 
under mountains heaped upon 
them. Their vain attempts to 
rise is the supposed cause of earth- 
quakes and volcanoes. 

" Or from our sacred hill, with fury 
thrown, 
Deep in the dark Tartarean gulph 

shall groan. 7 ' 
Jupiter's threat to the infiristr gods, 
Iliad, 6. Pope's Version* 

2. Latona was driven out of 
heaven, and having been got with 
child by Jupiter, without know- 
ledge of a man, she brought forth 
her son, our Lord and Saviour 
Ebcebus- Apollo "the brightness 
of his father's glory," and the ex- 
press image of his person. She 
was, at the time of her delivery, 
refused a place where to bring 



1. Satan, the eldest of the 
children of heaven, yielded to 
Jehovah the kingdom of the world, 
provided he raised no more chil- 
dren; but on the birth of Mes- 
siah, he rebelled, and raising war 
in heaven, " prevailed not, neither 
was his place found any more in 
heaven," (Rev. xii. 8.) " And 
the angels which kept not their 
first estate, he hath reserved in 
everlasting chains under darkness, 
unto the judgment of the great 
day."— Jude 6. 

" God spared not the angels 
that sinned, but cast them down 
to Heir— 2 Pet. ii. 4, Note 
well ! the original word signifies 
Tartarus. 

2. Eve was driven out of Para- 
dise, and in her representative 
Mary, " seeing she knew not a 
man," brought forth her son, our 
Lord Jesus Christ, " being the 
brightness of his glory, and the 
express image of his person," 
(Heb. i. 3,) " she laid him in a 
manger, because tnere was no 
room for them in the inn/' (Luke 



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THE ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES. 



903 



PAGAN MYTHOLOGY 

forth, and was persecuted all 
life by the dragon Python. 



CHRISTIAN REVELATION 

Compared. 

her ii. 7.) " And the dragon perse- 
cuted the woman which brought 
forth the man child. — " Rev. xii. 
13. 

3. And the seed of the woman 
bruised the serpent's head, "and 
her child was caught up to God, 
and to his throne." — Rev. xii. 5. 



the 
ex- 
his 



3. Her son at length slew 
Python, and was by Jupiter 
alted with great triumph unto 
kingdom in heaven. 

Another edition. 

4. Jupiter transforms himself 
into a swan, and in that shape 
enjoys Leda, a married woman, 
who became with child by him. 

5. The incarnation of Viche- 
nou. 

6. The Logos, or Word of 
God, an epithet of Mercury.-r- 
Justin Martyr* 8 Apology. 

7. Unum pro multis dabitur 
caput,( Virgil) — i 9 e.One head shall 
be given as the redemption for 
many. 

8. The Vandals had a god 
called Triglaff; one of those was 
found at Herlungerburg, near 
Brandenburg. He was repre- 
sented with three heads. This 
was apparently the Trinity of 
Paganism. 99 Such are the very 
words of the orthodox Christian, 
Parkburst. 

* The editors of the Unitarian New Version of the New Testament, who very 
modestly wish to shovel ail these spurcities and salacities out of the sacred text, 
have the impudence to tell us, in a note, that they were interpolated to lessen 
the odium attached to Christianity, from its founder being a crucified Jew, and 
to elevate him to the dignity of the heroes and demi-gods of the heathen mytho- 
logy. So then, the argument of the primitive Christians with their Pagan 
opponents was good-natured enough— If you won't adopt our religion , — why y 
we'll adopt yours. 



Another edition. 

4. Jehovah, in the shape of a 
pigeon, obumbrates the wife of 
Joseph, who becomes with child 
by him — Luke i.* 

6. The incarnation of Christ 

6. The Logos, or Word of God, 
an epithet of Jesus Christ. — St. 
John's Gospel. 

7. So Christ was once offered 
to bear the sins of many." Heb. 
ix. 28. 

8. " To God, the Father, Son, 
And Spirit ever blest — 

Eternal Three in One — 

All worship be addrest." 
Such are the words of the or- 
thodox Christian Doxology. 



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904 PYTHAGORAS. 

PAGAN MYTHOLOGY CHRISTIAN REVELATION 

Compared. 

9. The ancient Gauls bad an 9. The difference between Ht~ 
idol, under the name Hesus. who, sus and Jesus is but a breath* 
the mythologists say, answered to " The Lord of Hosts, he is the 
the Roman Mars, or Lord of Hosts, King of Glory/' — Psalm xxiv. 10. 
to whom they used to sacrifice " Thou art the King of Glory, 
their captives taken in war ; of O Christ ! — Te Deum> 14. 
whom Lucan, book 1, line 445, " Thou shalt bruise them with a 

rod of iron, and break them in 
Horrensqueferis altaribus Hesus ! pieces, like a potter's vessel."— 

Psalm ii. 9. 
Hesus, with cruel altars horrid '« And he was clothed in a ves- 
god ! ture dipped in blood." — Rev, xix, 

13. 



" Thus have I attempted to trace, with a confidence continually in- 
creasing as I advanced, a parallel between the gods adored in Greece, 
Italy, and India; but which was the original system, and which the 
copy, I will not presume to decide. I am persuaded, however, that a 
connection existed between the old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, 
Greece, and Italy, long before the birth of Moses." 

So concludes the pious Sir William Jones, Asiatic Researches, voL 
1, p. 271. The reader is to conclude as he pleases. 



CHAPTER XXXHL 

PYTHAGORAS, B. C. 586. 



As all ideas of man are derived from his senses, and consequently may 
be traced to their origination from that their only source, the gods and 
goddesses, or any god that conceit could form to itself would still 
admit of being referred to its primordial type in something the like of 
which experience had first impressed on the senses. Having found 
innumerable pre-existing models of the imaginary supernatural cha- 
racter of Christ, we discover in the Samian sage every thing that 
could have furnished forth the calmer and more philosophic personifica- 
tion of Unitarian Christianity, the mere man Jesus. 



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PYTHAGORAS. 300 

Pythagoras, as his name signifies, had been born under precisely the 
circumstances ascribed to Jesus Christ ; having been the object of a 
splendid dispensation of prophecy, and had his birth foretold by Apollo 
Pythus ; his soul having descended from its Primaeval state of com- 
panionship with the divine Apollo, " the glory which he had with the 
father before the world was" — John vii. 5. 

Divesting his story, however, of the supernatural superstructure that 
could be as easily pretended for any one extraordinary character as for 
any other ; it remains historically certain that this first of philosophers, 
and most distinguished individual of the human race, was a real cha- 
racter, and was born at Samoa in Greece, (from whence his epithet the 
Samian sage,) in the third year of the 48th Olympiad— that is, 586 
years before the epocha of the pretended birth of his Galilean rival. 
He was educated under Pherecydes, of Syrus, of whom Cicero speaks, 
as the first who inculcated the doctrine of the distinct existence and 
immortality of the soul ; and afterwards became the distinguished 
pupil of the priests of Egypt The limits of this work admit not ot 
our dwelling on any further particulars of his history, than those in 
which he presents the most clear and unquestionable type of the cha- 
racter afterwards set forth to the world under the prosopopeia gene* 
rally designated as Jesus Christ* 

Pythagoras is most characteristically associated with the doctrine 
which he taught, and which takes its name from him, — the Pythago- 
rean Metempsychosis.* After his master had broached the notion 'of 
the existence and immortality of souls, it was but a second and a neces- 
sary step, to find some employment for them ; and that of their eternal 
migration from one body to another, after every effort that imagination 
can make, will be found at least as consistent with reason as that of 
their existence at all, and that in which the mind, after all its plunges 
into the vast unknown, must ultimately acquiesce, f 

" Eternity ! thou pleasing, dreadful thought! 
Through what variety of untried being, 
Through what new scenes and changes must we pass I 
The wide, uV unbounded prospect lies before us ; 
But shadows, clouds, and darkness, rest upon it ! 

Addison's Cato. 
Pythagoras, however left behind Jiim more substantial evidence of 

* Mrri/A^t/^wo-^ the transmigration of the soul out of one body into another, 
from u£T« and ^i> the life, the breath, the wit, the sou], the je-ne-$ai$-quoi. 

t rhe Metempsychosis overthrows the doctrine of the everlasting torments of 
hell-fire; and, on that account, is less congenial to Christian dispositions. 



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206 PYTHAGORAS. 

real wisdom, and of Aetna} benefits conferred upon mankind, than were 
ever challenged for the imaginary successor of his honors. He is gene- 
rally and indisputably held to be the discoverer of the celebrated forty- 
ninth theorem of the first book of Euclid ; which demonstrates that the 
square of the hypothenuse of the right-angled triangle is equal to the 
sum of the squares of its sides ; and to have first laid down that theory 
of the planetary system which, after having been laid aside, or forgotten 
through all the intervening ages of Christian ignorance, has been re- 
vived, and shown to be the true and real system, by the discoveries of 
Sir Isaac Newton, and subsequent demonstrations of all succeeding 
astronomers. Had any thing like evidence of this nature been adduci- 
ble for the pretensions of Jesus of Nazareth, there would not have 
been an infidel in Christendom. 

Pythagoras was a teacher of the purest system of morals ever pro- 
pounded to man. He has the merit (let grateful women apportion his 
praise) of having first claimed and achieved for the fair sex, their dis- 
tinction of dress from that of men, and their title to that more tender 
respect and exalted courtesy which none worthy the name of men will 
ever withhold from them. He abated the ferocity of war, and taught 
and induced mankind to extend feelings of humanity and tenderness to 
the whole brute creation. His personal beauty surpassed whatever else 
had been seen in humanity ; his voice was the richest music that ever 
sounded on the human ear, and his powers of suasion were absolutely 
irresistible. The Christian Fathers taunt his vanity and ridicule his 
claims to supernatural memory ; but it is certain that Pythagoras has 
himself ascribed his memory to the especial favour of heaven, and held 
the happiest endowments ever possessed by man with the utmost meek- 
ness in himself, and to the greatest possible profit to mankind. His 
notions of the Deity will challenge comparison with any that enrich the 
pages of Christian Scripture. The principle of self-examination, 
which he inculcated on his disciples, as we see in the golden versa 
ascribed to him, is far from being compatible with so proud a spirit, as 
his mighty reason to be proud might tempt our envy to ascribe to him ; 
or if the genuineness of those verses, which at any rate are from no 
Christian mint, be disputable, the short and pithy axiom which Clemens 
Alexandrinus acknowledges to have been characteristically Ats, must 
for ever number him among those who have thought of the Deity so as 
none of the human race, whether without the aid of revelation or with- 
it, have ever thought more worthily — " None but God is wise," said 
Pythagoras. 

Pythagoras himself was certainly not the inventor of the doctrine of 
the Metempsychosis, but learned it of the Egyptian monks, in whose 



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PYTHAGORAS. 307 

college he was long a resident, and of whose ecclesiastical fraternity he 
was unquestionably a member ; he only inculcated this doctrine more 
earnestly, and endeavoured to weld it, as he did other superstitions 
which he found too deeply rooted to be eradicated, to useful, or at 
least innocent and inoffensive applications. 

The Christian doctrines of original sin, and of the necessity of being 
born again, are evident misunderstandings of the doctrine of the Pytha- 
gorean Metempsychosis, which constituted the inward spiritual grace, 
or essential significancy of the Eleusinian mysteries ; as the classical 
reader will find those mysteries sublimely treated of in the 6th book of 
Virgil's JEneid. The term of migration during which the soul of man 
was believed to expiate in other forms the deeds done in its days of 
humanity, was exactly a thousand years ; after which, drinking of the 
waters of Lethe, which caused a forgetfulness of all that had passed, it 
was ferryed down the river, or sailed under the conduct of Mercury, 
the Logos, or Word of G6a\ and " wind and tide serving," was so borne 
or carried, and borne of water and mind,* and launched again into 
humanity, for a fresh experiment of moral probation. Hence souls that 
had acquitted themselves but ill in their previous existence, were 
believed to be born in sin, and to have brought with them the remains 
of a corrupt nature derived from their former state, for which they 
were still further punished by the calamitous circumstances in which 
they were born, or the difficulties with which they should still have to 
contend, till they should ultimately recover themselves to virtue and hap- 
piness. This was the doctrine, and nothing but this, which Christ is 
represented as endeavouring to inculcate upon Nicodemus the ruler of 
the Jews ; and for his ignorance and gross apprehensions of which, he 
so tartly rallies that Jewish rabbi — " Art thou a master of Israel, and 
knowest not these things ?"— -John iii. 10. It must be stupidity itself 
that could dream of any reason or propriety in rebuking the Jewish 
ruler for not knowing these things, if they were matters then first 
revealed, or not so common as that no well-educated person had any 
excuse for being ignorant of them. 

In John ix. 2, the disciples are represented as propounding to Jesus 
a question which would never have occurred but to minds entirely 

• Our English of the words t&t pn t*$ ytmfyn t| v§ouro$ *tu lenvpwros — " Ex- 
cept a man be born of water and of the spirit," (John iii. 5,) and of the words 
mus iot* ira$ o yvyivniptws i* t» imu/AOTos — " So is every one that is born of the 

firit," (John iii. 8,) is a Jesuitical imposition upon the simplicity of the mere 
nghsh reader. The real rendering is, " born of the Wind or Puff." So the 
Holy Ghost should be rendered the Holt Puff, Note, nothing makes a man 
so ^irtf ua%«minded as wind a* the stomach. 



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208 PYTHAGORAS. 

possessed of the Pythagorean doctrine — u Master, who did sin, this 
man or his parents, that he was born blind V* which the Master (the 
characteristic epithet of Pythagoras) answers precisely as Pythagoras 
might have done — " Neither hath this man sinned nor his parents" 
&c While the Jews imagine themselves to launch the severest invec- 
tive against the blind man, in holding his being born blind as a proof 
that he must have been a very wicked wretch in some pre-existing 
state ; — " Thou wast altogether born in sins, and dost thou teach us 9" 
—-John. xi. 34. 

In Matthew xvii. 14, we find the Pharisees represented, according to 
the Pythagorean doctrines, as saying that Jesus was Elias ; and in 
Matthew xviii. 13, Jesus himself, so far from discountenancing chat 
doctrine, confirms it, by giving his disciples to understand that John the 
Baptist was the soul of Elias come again in the person of that prophet. 

But the ninetieth Psalm, selected to be read as a part of out 
Burial Service is entirely Pythagorean, and delivers the doctrine of the 
Metempsychosis too particularly to be mistaken, or to admit of any 
other possible understanding : — 

" Lord, thou hast been our refuge from one generation to another " 
that is, in every state of existence through which we have already passed. 

" Thou turnest man to destruction : again thou sayest, Come again, 
ye children of men"* 

" For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday ; seeing 
that is passed as a watch in the night.** 

" Comfort us again now, after the time that thou hast plagued us, 
and for the years wherein we have suffered adversity, &c." 

Be it remembered, that the exact length of the Pythagorean term of 
migration was a thousand years ; and surely no argument could seem 
so well calculated to console and comfort the mind under the fear of 
death, or for the loss of friends, as the persuasion thus inculcated, that 
the period of separation would pass but as a watch in the night, and 
that, upon their next return into humanity, they should be comforted 
in proportion to all the adversity that they had gone through in their 
present condition. 

That Pythagoras should have adopted this whimsical but sublime 
theory, as the basis of a superior system of morality, or rather, perhaps, 
made the best of a system which he found too deeply-rooted in men's 
minds to admit of being safely disturbed ; that he should have followed 

* Observe how evidently this is the language of quotation. Some word of God, 
or from some sacred scripture which had reported his word, before either the 
New or Old Testament had been imposed on human credulity. 



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PYTHAGORAS. 809 

that allegorical and enigmatical mode of conveying metaphysical specu- 
lations* and moral truths, which characterized his age and country, 
thereby subjecting himself and his theories to the ridicule that must 
necessarily attach to all allegories and figurations, whose significancy 
can no longer be traced ; that he should have descended to the jug- 
gling tricks of pretended communications with the Deity ; that he 
should have deceived mankind in so many particulars in which it cannot 
be denied that he was a deceiver, and have degraded his great wisdom 
by a conjunction with at great folly ; has its full apology in the simple 
statement, Pythagoras was a man ; and with all his imperfections on 
his head, we shall look among the race of men, for his better, in vain, 
yea, for his equal, or his second, but in vain. 

Pythagoras was entirely a Deist, a steady maintainer of the unity of 
God, and of the eternal obligations of moral virtue. No Christian 
writings, even to this day, can compete in sublimity and grandeur with 
what this illustrious philosopher has laid down concerning God, and 
the end of all our actions ; and it is likely, says Bayle, that he would 
have carried his orthodoxy much farther, had he had the courage to 
expose himself to martyrdom. 

The circumstances of the death of Pythagoras are variously reported. 
He lived at Crotona, in Milo's house, with his disciples, and was 
burnt in it. A man whom he refused to admit into his society, set the 
house on fire. 

According to Dicaearchus, he fled to the temple of the muses at 
Metapontum, and died there of hunger. See upon this subject the 
learned collections of Menagius. Arnobius affirms that he was burnt 
alive in a temple ; others state that he was slain in attempting to make 
his escape. 

It can hardly be doubted that his death was violent, notwithstanding 
the divine honours paid to him afterwards, and that, with all that he 
did to deceive mankind, or rather perhaps to preserve himself he fell at 
last a martyr to his generous efforts to undeceive them. 

The strongest type of resemblance or coincidence with the apostolic 
story, which the history of the Samian sage presents is, that the Egyp- 
tian Therapeuts boasted of his name as a member of their monastic 
institution ; and that Pythagoras certainly made his disciples live in 

* His religious respect or antipathy to beans, were the circumstance divested 
of Christian exaggeration, or were we possessed of the clue, might admit of as 
rational an unravelling as the Egyptian worship of onions. See this Diegesis, 
p. 22. Aristoxenus assures us that Pythagoras would often eat beans, his reli- 
gious conceits notwithstanding. 

27 2d 



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210 PYTHAGORAS, 

common, and that they renounced their property in their patrimony, 
and that " as many as were possessors of lands or houses, sold them, 
and brought the prices of the things that were sold and laid them down 
at the apostles 9 feet ; and distribution was made to every man accord- 
ing as he had need"— Acts iv. 35. 

An ill construction was put upon their union, and it proved very 
fatal to them. That society of students being looked upon as a faction 
which conspired against the state, sixty of them were destroyed, and 
the rest ran away, " Three hundred young men," says Justin, " formed 
into a society by a kind of oath, lived together by themselves, and were 
looked upon as a private faction by the state, who intended to burn 
them as they were assembled in one house. Almost sixty of them 
perished in the tumult, and the rest went into banishment/' This 
event, however, appears not to have occurred till some time after the 
death of their divine master. 

Let the reader compare these historical facts with the story of the 
Holy Ghost descending in the shape of fire upon the heads of the 
apostles, when they were all with one accord in one place, and their 
subsequent dispersion, as detailed in the second chapter of the Acts of 
the Apostles, so grossly fabulous, and so monstrously absurd, that there 
is not in the present day a Christian minister, who dare bring the sub- 
ject before the contemplation of his hearers ; and then let him give to 
Christianity the benefit of all the doubt he shall entertain that these 
facts are not the basis of that fiction. — See his Creed and Golden 
Verses, in our chapter Specimens op Pagan Piety. 

So conscious are the Christian Fathers of the superiority of Pytha* 
goras in every respect, that they endeavour to show that he was a 
Jew;* that he had been an immediate disciple of the Jewish prophet 
Ezekiel ; that he, as well as Pherecydes, Thales, Solon, and Plato, had 
learned the doctrine of the true God, not only among the Egyptians, 
but from the Hebrews themselves. 

In the account which the emperor Constantine gives of the matter, 
in his oration to the holy congregation of the clergy, Pythagoras, to be 
sure, is an impostor, inasmuch as that " those things which the prophets 
had foretold, he delivered to the Italians as if God had particularly 
revealed them to him "f 

* Imofuere qui Nazaratum Pythagorae prsceptorem idem hie est cum Zabrato, 
ipsum esse Ezechelem prophetam tradiderunt. Ex populo Judaorum geuus 
duxisse Pythagorara, plerosque arbitrare scribit Ambrosius. — Kortholli Pagan. 
Obtrect. p. 43. $o<r* h outs? ev ouyvirrv a fjuotof rap' cuyviervt, »XKat xou rap 
Efipeuw t* irtp ruoirus hi»x^n*cu tyiB.^Tktodorttus Thereapeut, lib. 1. 

■*■ Constantine's Oratior c. 9. 



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TILLOTSON. SJ1 

Lactantius, however, admits, and expresses his wonder, " that when 
Pythagoras, and afterwards Plato, incited by the love of seeking truth, 
had travelled as far as to the Egyptians, the Magi, and the Persians, 
to learn the rites and ceremonies of those nations, they should never 
have consulted the Jews, with whom alone the true wisdom was to be 
found, and to whom they might have gone more readily."*— The 
Jews!! — Paughl 

Of the vast variety of religions which have prevailed at different 
times in the world, perhaps there was no one that has been more gene- 
ral than that of the Metempsychosis, It continued to be believed by 
the early Christian Fathers, and by several sects of Christiana, 

" As much as this doctrine is now scouted, it was held not only by 
almost all the great men of antiquity, but a late very ingenious writer, 
philosopher, and Christian apologist, avowed his belief in it, and pub- 
lished a defence of it; namely, the late Soame Jenyns. ,, — Higgins' 
Celtic Druids, pp. 283, 284. 

It is not, indeed, rational ; but what metaphysical speculation of any 
sort is so ? Had it been more frightful, it would have been more 
orthodox. 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON's CONFESSION OP THE IDENTITY OP 
CHRISTIANITY AND PAGANISM, f 

As it is really too much to be believed, and we wish to draw on no 
man's confidence who may have the means of certifying himself; that the 
highest dignitary of the church of England, the brightest ornament it 
ever had, and the honestest man that ever received honour from it, or 
reflected honour on it, should so have given tongue, so have confessed 
the whole cheat, betrayed his craft, and yielded every thing that philo- 
sophy could aim to conquer: I give the "litera scripta," the "sprit- 

* Soleo admirari quod cum Pythagoras et postea Plato amore indagaadae 
veritatis accensi, ad ifcgyptios et Magos, et Persas usque penetrassent, ut earum 
gentium ritus et sacra cognoscerent — ad Judaeos tantum non accesserint, penes 
quos tunc solos erat, et quo facilius ire potuissent. — Divin. Imt. lib. 4, cap. 2. 

t For the " Life of Archbishop Tillotson," see Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical 
Biography. An Essay on his Character and Writings, constitutes the fifteenth of 
the author's fifty letters from Oakham, and will be found in the 21st number 
of the 1st. volume of The Lion. 



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9IS TILLOTSON. 

tttma verba" the written letter, the very words themselves, which will 
be found in the forty-sixth of the " fifty-four sermons and discourses 
which were published by his Grace himself;" this being the second of 
the two entitled, " Concerning the Incarnation of our blessed Saviour;" 
on the text (John i.. 14,) " The Word was made Jlesh ; n and preached 
in the church of St. Lawrence Jewry, Dec. 28, 1680 ;* occurring m 
the fourth volume, 8vo., of Woodhouse's edition, a.d. 1744; and of 
that volume, p. 143. It is remarkable, that, even so long ago, roan- 
kind were not quite so stupid as not to scent out the la ti taut waggery 
of these discourses, which would have gone nigh to have cost an eccle- 
siastic of humbler rank his ears in the pillory, or at least a year or two 
in Oakham jail. The mitred infidel, however, in an advertisement to 
the reader, informs us, that " the true reason of publishing these dis- 
courses, was not the importunity of friends, but the importune cla- 
mours and malicious calumnies of others, whom he heartily prays God 
to forgive, and give them better minds." Amen. 

Some Account of the Christian Dispensation. 

" The third and last thing which I proposed upon this argument of 
the Incarnation of the Son of God, was to give some account of this 
dispensation, and to show that the wisdom of God thought fit thus to 
order things, in great condescension to the weakness and common pre- 
judices of mankind. t 

" And it is the more necessary to give some account of this 
matter, because after all that hath hitherto been said in answer to the 
objections against it, J it may still seem very strange to a considering 
man,§ that God, who could without all this circumstance and con- 
descension have done the business fi should yet have made choice of 
this^way," &c. 

• The characteristic distinction between Archbishop Tillotson and other arch- 
bishops and bishops, those of our own time more especially, is, that he was fool- 
ish enough to commit himself by public preaching, which our modern bishops, on 
the principle, " least said soonest mended" know better than to do ! and that 
though he was withal a very bishop, he was an honester man than any of them; 
and, God knows, that's no compliment. 

f The reader will observe, that the hyphen, thus, — , is inserted, to indicate 
that the sentence is relieved of its prolixity : not a syllable is added, nor one 
omitted, that in the least degree could qualify the sense. 

J Which is, being interpreted — All that has been said in answer to the objec- 
tions, has been very jej une and unsatisfactory . 

$ Which is, be'mginterpreted — It is considering men who are the infidels. 

% Which is, being interpreted — Much ado about nothing. 



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1 



TILLOTSON. 318 

" But since God hath been pleased to pitch upon this way rather 
than any other, this surely ought to be reason enough, whether the 
particular reasons of it appear to us or not.* — p. 144. 

" Secondly, I consider, in the next place, that in several revelations 
which God hath made of himself to mankind, he hath, with great conde- 
scension, accommodated himself to the condition and capacity, and 
other circumstances, of the persons and people to whom they were 
made. For the religion and laws which God gave them (*. e. the 
Jewish nation) were far from being the best (indeed I). God gave 
them statutes which were not good, that is, very imperfect in comparison 
of what he could and would have given them had they been capable of 
themf. — p. 145. 

" Thirdly, I observe yet further, that though the Christian religion, 
as to the main and substance of it, be a most perfect institution; yet, 
upon a due consideration of things, it cannot be- denied, that the man* 
ner and circumstances of this dispensation are full of condescension to 
the weakness of mankind, and very much accommodated to the most 
common and deeply radicated prejudices of men.} 

" But in history and fact, this is certain, that some notions, and 
those very gross and erroneous, did almost universally prevail ; and 
though some of these were much more tolerable than others, yet God 
seems to have had great consideration of some very weak and gross 
apprehensions of mankind concerning religion. And as in some of 
the laws given by Moses, God was pleased particularly to consider the 
hardness of the hearts of that people ; so he seems likewise to have 
very much suited the dispensation of the Gospel, and the method of 
our salvation, by the incarnation and sufferings of his Son, to the 
common prejudices of mankind, especially of the heathen world, whose 
minds were less prepared for this dispensation than the Jews.§ 

" That God hath done this in the dispensation of the Gospel, will, I 
think, very plainly appear in the following instances. — p. 147. 



• Which is, being interpreted, " Shut your eyes and open your moutn, and see 
what God will send you." 

t This might have been fair play, provided God himself was not able to en- 
laige or improve their capacity. 

t Which is, being interpreted— The Christian religion, even as to the main and 
substance of it, is full of nonsense and barbarity, and only suited to the brutal 
apprehensions of savages and fools. 

§ Good God I could a bishop in stronger significancy discover his heartfelt 
hatred of Christianity. He held Christians to be more hard-hearted than the 
Jews themselves, and so God suited his religion to their hard-heartedness. 



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314 TJLLOTSON. 

" 1st, The world was much given to admire mysteries,* most of which 
were either very odd and fantastical, or very lewd and impure, or very in- 
human and cruel. But the great mystery of the incarnation of the 
Son of God, was such a mystery as did obscure and swallow up all 
other mysteries. Since the world had such an admiration for mys- 
teries, that was a mystery indeed — a mystery beyond all dispute, and 
beyond all comparison. f — p, 48. 

" 2dly. There was likewise a great inclination in mankind to the wor- 
ship of a visible Deity, (so) God was pleased to appear in our nature, 
that they who were so fond of a visible Deity might have one, even a 
true and natural image of God the Father, the express image of his 
person.} 

" 3dly. Another notion which has generally obtained among mankind, 
was concerning the expiation of the sins of men, and appeasing the 
offended Deity by sacrifice — upon which they supposed the punishment 
due to the sinner was transferred — to exempt him from it, especially by 
the sacrifices of men.§ — p. 148. And with this general notion of man- 

* Compare with the chapter Eleusinian Mysteries, and with Admissions of 
Christian Writers, p. 48, par. 51, in this Dxeobsib. 

t O spirit of Voltaire ! Was ever sarcasm on earth more sarcastic ? Was it 
in plainer language that an Archbishop of Canterbury could have told us, that 
the Christian religion was the oddest, the lewdest, and the bloodiest that ever was 
upon earth, " beyond all dispute, and beyond all comparison ?" 

I This was the Spaniard Cortes' way of converting the Mexicans, when he 
threw down their image of the Sun, and unfurled a picture of the Virgin Mary, 
in its stead, with a — " There, you dogs, an' you must have something to wor- 
ship, worship that 1" — History of America, 

And thus in the original Acts of the Apostles, written by Abdias Bishop of 
Babylon, who professes to have been ordained by the Apostles themselves, we 
have it related, that the blessed Saint Phillip the Evangelist, preaching to the 
Scythians, exclaimed/ ' Throw down this Mars and break him, arid in the place in 
which he seems to stand fixed, set up the Cross of my Lord Jesus Christ, and 
worship that. 17 — Dejicite hunc Martem et confringite, et in loco in quos fixus 
videtur stare, crucem Domini mei Jesu Christi affigite, et hanc adorate.— 
Fabricii Cod. Apocrypt. in hoc re. 

§ That is, God was pleased to approve and sanction human sacrifices. And 
what was the difference between this God and Moloch? His Grace, however, 
has the most explicit texts of the New Testament on his side, (and no rational 
man will ever have a word to say against the Old Testament) : " For if the blood 
of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth 
to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ ," Sfd 
Heb. ix. 13. — The force of the whole argument is,— the more monstrously hor- 
rible, the more cruel, barbarous, aud bloody, the more sanctifying efficacy in the 
sacrifice, and the more acceptable to this horrid Goo 



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TILLOTSON, 315 

kind God was pleased so far to comply, as once for all to have a general 
atonement made for the sins of all mankind, by the sacrifice of his only 
Son, whom his wise providence did permit by wicked hands to be cru- 
cified and slain. 

* 4thly, Another very common notion, and very rife in the heathen 
world, and a great source of their idolatry, was their apotheosis, or 
canonizing of famous and eminent persons, by advancing them after 
their death to the dignity of an inferior kind of gods, fit to be wor- 
shipped by men here on earth, &c. Now, to take men off from this 
kind of idolatry, and to put an end to it, behold ! one in our nature 
exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high, to be worshipped by 
men and angels ; one that was dead and is alive again, and lives for 
evermore to make intercessions for us.* 

" 5thly, The world was mightily bent upon addressing their requests 
and supplications, not to the Deity immediately, but by some mediators 
between the gods and them. In a gracious compliance with this com- 
mon apprehension, God was pleased to constitute and appoint One in 
our nature to be a perpetual advocate and intercessor in heaven for us, 
bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh ; f so very nearly allied and re- 
lated to us, (that) we may easily believe that he hath a most tender care 
and concernment for us, if we ourselves, by our own wilful obstinacy, 
do not hinder it ; for if we be resolved to continue impenitent, there is 
no help for us ; we must die in our sins, and salvation itself cannot save 
us/' (p. 152.) — Thus far his Grace uf Canterbury 

The reader is requested to compare this language throughout, with 
the avowals of Mosheim, the apologies of Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr, 
and Tertullian— with the concessions of Gregory of Caesarea, Origen, 
and Melito, in their places in this Deegesis — and with the total ab- 
sence of any historical recognition of the existence of Christianity, as 
distinct from Paganism, within the first hundred years, or as distinct 
from a sectarian excrescence grown upon Paganism, within the first 
thousand years, and let him be faithful to his own convictions. 

* Perhaps this is the severest irony, the most caustic sarcasm, that was ever 
couched in words. It is the " Show 'em in here" and " All alive, !" of Bar- 
tholomew Fair. It is—" Our tricks beat theirs !" It is—" The fools ! the 
idiots ! nothing can be too gross for 'em." 

f This is good, honest, downright materwlism. " Bone of our bone, and 
flesh of our flesh," must involve our ways of making and sustaining bone and 
flesh. Here is no ikiey and cloudy work, and no room to rail at Mahomet's 
terrestrial paradise. 



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t\S RESEMBLANCE, 

CHAPTER XXXV. 

RESEMBLANCE OF PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN FORMS OF WORSHIP. 

It would be alien from all ends of a Diegesis, or general narration 
of the character and evidences of the Christian religion, to have any 
ear or regard to the vituperations and wranglings of the various sects 
of Christians, who are each, if attended to, for unchristianizing all bat 
themselves, and thus tearing the cause of their common Christianity to 
pieces, or surrendering it undefended to the scorn and triumph of its 
enemies. If Christianity be not, or was not, what the majority of those 
who professed and called themselves Christians, through a thousand 
years of its existence, held it to be, there is a sheer end of all possibility 
of ascertaining what it was, or is, since, at that rate, it amounts to no 
more than the ideal chimera of any cracked brain you shall meet with, 
and all that can be said of it is — 

" As the fool thinketh, 
So the bell tinkled!." 

The intolerant and persecuting spirit of the established Protestant 
church, and the severity of the penalties inflicted by law on all con- 
scientious and honest avowals of the convictions which superior learning 
and deeper research might lead to, has enforced on the wisest and best 
of men a necessity of conveying their general scepticism under uovert 
of attacking the peculiar doctrines and practices of the church of Rome. 
Because this mode of attack would be endured, this only was to be 
tolerated. The predominant sect, so their own tenure on the profits of 
gospelling remained unendangered, would look on with indifference, or 
even join in the game of running down and tearing to pieces their com- 
mon parent. To this contentious spirit of Christians among them- 
selves, and their union only in the wicked policy of persecuting iafi- 
deU, we owe discoveries which in no other way could have attracted 
equal attention. We are thus enabled to carry some or other of recog- 
nised Christian authorities all the way with us, taking up one where we 
set down another, till we arrive at the complete breaking up of all pre- 
tence to evidence of any sort, and bring orthodoxy itself to subscribe the 
demonstrations of reason. Thus M. Daille, in his attempt to show that 
the religious worship of his fellow Christians of the Roman Catholic 
communion could be distinctly traced to the institutions of Numa 
Pompilius, must lead every mind, capable of tracing our Protestant 
forms of piety to Roman Catholic institutions, to connect the first and 
.ast link of the sorites : ergo, Protestant ceremonies must have had the 
same origination. 



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RESEMBLANCE* 217 

Dr. Conyers Middleton, the most distinguished ornament of the 
church of England, could not, compatibly with his personal convenience, 
venture to go the whole length of the way which he points out to the 
travel of freer spirits, though, by demonstrating the utter falsehood 
and physical impossibility of all and every other pretended miracle that 
ever was in the world, not excepting one (except such as he might have 
been put in the pillory if he had not excepted), he leaves the conclu- 
sion to be drawn— as it may be by every mind capable of drawing a 
conclusion, and as he could securely calculate that it would be — with a 
stronger effect of conviction than if he had himself prescribed it. 

Without regarding any of the distinctions without difference upon 
which the jarring sects of Christians wrangle among themselves, we 
pass now from the comparison of the doctrines of what has been 
called divine Revelation, with the previously existing tenets and dog- 
mas of Paganism, to an examination of the no less striking resemblance 
of Pagan and Christian forms of worship. 

Priests, altars, temples, solemn festivals, melancholy grimaces, ridi- 
culous attitudes, trinkets, baubles, bells, candles, cushions, holy water, 
holy wine, holy biscuits, holy oil, holy smoke, holy vestments, and holy 
books, state candlesticks, dim-painted windows,* chalices, salvers, 
pictures, tablets, achievements, music, &c. are found in various modi- 
fications, and arrangements, not only in the sanctuaries of the Roman 
Catholic communion, but some or other, or all of them, even in me- 
thodistical conventicles, or in Unitarian pagodas supposed to be at the 
farthest remove from any intended adoption of the Pagan and Papal 
ceremonies. 

We have seen the pontifical mitre, the augural staff, the keys of 
Janus, and the Capitoline chickens, emblazoned on the armorial bear- 
ings, not of Popish, but of our Protestant bishops. The religious 
faction that seemed very reasonably to object to the " pomps and 
vanities of this sinful world," while in the possession of those who 
had corrupted the pure faith of Christianity, very meekly and consist- 
ently take upon themselves the burthen of three times the revenues of 
that corrupt church.t Those who were shocked at so flagrant a viola- 
tion of the precepts of their divine Master, as that of the bishop of 

* In the most splendid chapel of the Methodists (Queen Street, Lincoln's 
Inn), the altar stands in a druidical alcove, upon which the light descends 
through yellow glass, to give to the countenance of their priests such a death- 
like tinge, as might make them seem to be standing under the immediate illapses 
of inspiration, " Creatures not of this earth, and yet being on it.* 

f See the Table of Ecclesiastical Revenues. 

28 2 b 



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218 RESEMBLANCE. 

Rome, who styled himself servant of the servants of God, were con- 
tent to be known only as — Right Reverend and most Reverend Fathers 
in God, His Grace the Lord Archbishop, Bishop, Prelate, Metropo- 
litan and Primate, next in precedency to the blood royal, &c. &c. We 
have only to hope that Lactantius might have carried the matter too 
far where he says, " that among those who seek power and gain from 
their religion, there will never be wanting an inclination to forge and 
to lie for it."* 

" That Popery has borrowed its principal ceremonies and doctrines 
from the rituals of Paganism," is a fact which the most learned and 
orthodox of the established church have most strenuously maintained 
and most convincingly demonstrated. 

That Protestantism has borrowed its principal ceremonies and doc- 
trines from the rituals of Popery, is a fact which the most learned and 
orthodox of the Catholic church as strenuously maintain, and as con- 
vincingly demonstrate. The conclusion, that Christianity is altogether 
Baganish, is as inevitable, as that if it be to be found neither among 
Catholics nor Protestants, there can be no such thing upon earth. 

THE WHITE SURPLICE, 

As worn by all our Protestant clergy, was the dress of the Pagan 
priesthood in a part of their public officiations, and is so described by 
the satirist Juvenal,t and the poet Ovid. J It was the peculiar habili- 
ment of the priests of Isis; and Isis herself being believed to have been 
the inventress of linen, of which these surplices are made, her effemi- 
nate priests were distinguished from more manly impostors by the still- 
applicable epithet of surplice or linen wearers. Silius, however, speak- 
ing of the rites used in the Gaditan Temple of Hercules, instructs us 
that the priests of Hercules were also distinguished by wearing the 
white surplice. " They went barefoot, practised chastity, had no 
statues, wore white linen surplices, and paid tithe to Hercules ;" that 
is, they were liberal in subscriptions to keep up the system that kept 
them up. 

HOLY WATER. 

Water, wherein the person is baptised in the name of the Father, 
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. — Church of England Catechism. 

* Lactant. De fals. Relig. 1.4. 

t Qui grege liniger circumdatus et gregecalvo. — Juv. 6. 3. 

J Nunc Dea liniger^ colitur celleberrima turba. — Ovid. Met. 1. 746. 



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RESEMBLANCE. 219 

THE BAPTISMAL FONTS 

In our Protestant churches, and we can hardly say more especially the 
little cisterns at the entrance of our Catholic chapels, are not imitations, 
but an unbroken and never interrupted continuation of the same 
aquaminaria or amula, which the learned Montfaucon, in his Anti- 
quities, shows to have been vases of holy water, which were placed by 
the heathens at the entrance of their temples, to sprinkle themselves 
with upon entering those sacred edifices. "And with pure dews 
sprinkled, enter the temples, "* Euripides stands only in para- 
phrase in our Heb. x. 22, " Let us draw near with a true heart, hav- 
ing our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed 
with pure water." The same vessel was called by the Greeks the 
sprinkler. \ Two of these, the one of gold, the other of silver, were 
given by Croesus to the temple of Apollo at Delphi. Justin Martyr, 
the second in succession of the Christian Fathers, next to those who 
are called apostolic, says, that " this ablution, or wash, was invented by 
demons, in imitation of the true baptism, that their votaries might also 
have their pretended purifications by water "J There certainly must 
have been something supernaturally ingenious in the inventions of these 
diabolical imitators, who always contrived to be the authors of the very 
first specimens of what they imitated, and to get their imitations into 
full vogue before the originals from which they copied were in exist- 
ence. The "sanctifieation of water to the mystical washing away of 
sin/' and in signification of " a death unto sin and a new birth unto 
righteousness," had not only been used, but most abundantly abused, 
before its original institution as a Christian sacrament : as we find 
Ovid in verse, § and the best and wisest of the whole human race, 
Cicero, in his philosophical writings, severely rebuking the egregious 
absurdity of expecting moral improvement from any such foolish and 
contemptible superstitions. 

The form of the asperg ilium, or sprinkling-brush, as used by the 
clergy of the Catholic communion in sprinkling our Christian congre- 

* KaSapou; h Xpoom 

t IlfpippaMiTiipioy. 

X Kat to Xvrpoy in rttro axyararrts 01 daiftoirtf ha ra irpo$»)Ttf 'XEKHpv;gufi>oy. 
wtpyipw xau pau**£u» tatmss t»j u; t» up* aurm nnfiauKrraq.—JuU. Hart. 
Apol.l, p. 91, edit. Thirlb. 

§ Ah minium faciles qui tristia crimina caedis 
Fluminea tolii posse putetis aqua — Ovid. Fast. 2. 45. 
At animi labes nee diuternitate evanescere nee ullis amnis elui potest— Cicero. 



Ie 



***** — 



390 RESEMBLANCE. 

gations, is yet to be seen in bat-reliefs and ancient coins, wherever 
the insignia or emblems of the Pagan priesthood are described. It may 
be seen at this day on a silver coin of Julias Caesar, as well as on the 
coins of many other emperors. The severe ridicule and sarcasm 
heaped by our Protestant clergy on their Catholic brethren, for extend- 
ing the benefit of these mysterious sprinklings to their horses, asses, 
and other cattle, would come with a better grace, if they themselves 
would explain what there is of a more rational and dignified signifi- 
cancy in sprinkling new-born infants, who, in the eye of reason and 
common sense, might seem as little capable of receiving any benefit 
from the ceremony as the brute creation. 

The ancient Pagans had especial gods and goddesses who presided 
over the births of infants, The goddess Nundina took her name from 
the ninth day, on which all male children were sprinkled with holy 
water, as females were on the eighth, at the same time receiving their 
Pagan name ! of which addition to the ceremonial of Christian bap- 
tism, we find no mention in the Christian Scriptures. When all the 
forms of the Pagan nundination were duly complied with, the priest gave 
a certificate to the parents of the regenerated infant ; it was thence- 
forth duly recognized as a legitimate member of the family and of 
society, and the day was spent in Jeasting and hilarity. 

Facsimile of a Pagan Certificate Copy of the form of a Christian 

of Nundination. Certificate, of Baptism. 

I certify you, that in this case all I certify you, that in this case all 

is well done, and according unto is well done, and according unto 

due order, concerning the nundi- due order, concerning the baptiz- 

nation of this child, who, being ing of this child, who, being born 

born in original sin, and in the in original sin, and in the wrath 

wrath of God, is now, by the laver of God, is now, by the laver of 

of regeneration in baptism, re- regeneration in baptism, received 

ceived into the number of the into the number of the children of 

children of God, and heirs of the God, and heirs of everlasting life. 

right of life. -—Church of England Baptismal 

Arcan Probabilium. Service. 

The old stories and impostures of the ancient Paganism, and the new 
versions of them, as adopted and sanctified by the faith of Christian 
believers, may be compared by juxta-position, thus — 

PAGAN. CHRISTIAN. 

Cicero, concerning the origin , The whole collegiate church of 
of divination, relates — » regular canons, concerning the 



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RESEMBLANCE. 



931 



That a man being at plough in 
a certain field of Etruria, and 
happening to strike his plough 
somewhat deeper than ordinary, 
there started up before him, out of 
the furrow, a Deity ; whom they 
called Tages. The ploughman, 
terrified by so strange an appari- 
tion, made such an outcry, that he 
alarmed all his neighbours, and in 
a short time drew the whole coun- 
try around him; to whom The 
God, in the hearing of them all, 
explained the whole art and mys- 
tery of divination ; which all their 
writers and records affirmed to be 
the genuine origin of that disci- 
pline for which the old Tuscans 
were afterwards so famous. — Cic. 
de divin. 2. 23. Cicero, however, 
-subjoins, that to attempt to con- 
fute such stories would be as silly 
as to believe them. 



origin of St. Mary of Impruneta,* 
relate — 

When the inhabitants of Impru- 
netahad resolved to build a church 
to the Virgin, and were digging 
the foundations of it with great 
zeal, on a spot marked out to 
them by heaven, one of the la- 
bourers happened to strike his 
pickaxe against something under 
ground, from which there issued 
presently a complaining voice or 
groan. The workmen being 
greatly amazed, put a stop to their 
work for a while ; but having re- 
covered their spirits, after some 
pause they ventured to open the 
place from which the voice came, 
and found the miraculous image. 
This is delivered by their writers, 
not grounded, as they say. on 
vulgar fame, but on public records 
and histories, confirmed by a per- 
petual series of miracles. — Mid* 
dleton's Pref. Disc, to Letter from 
Rome. 

Our modern Iconoclastsf will be ready to cry out, that the asserters 
of these popish stories were no Christians : not seeing the dilemma 
they rush on, in subjecting themselves to the utterly unanswerable 
challenge, Who then were Christians ? Let them strike from their 
list* if they please, all the writers whose faith and credibility has been 
pawned and forfeited on stories, — than which the best are than this— 
no better : let them join the laugh against their Eusebius, for taking 
owls for angels; their St. Augustin, for preaching the gospel to a whole 
nation of men and women that had no heads ; their Origen, for being a 
priest of the goddess Cybele and of Jesus Christ at the same time ; 
their Tertullian, for believing the resurrection of Christ, because it was 
impossible; their Gregory for writing letters to the Devil, yes! and 

* Impruneta, a small town six miles from Florence, 
f Image-breakers. 



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22$ RESEMBLANCE. 

their great Protestant reformer Martin Luther, for seriously believing, 
that the Devil ran away with children out of their cradles, and put his 
own imps in their places. And then produce all the testimonies they 
shall have left, of the existence of a religion that was not essentially and 
absolutely pagan, at any time before the period of their pretended 
reformation. 

The only difference was, that Jupiter was turned into Jehovah, 
Apollo into Jesus Christ, Venus's pigeon into the Holy Ghost, Diana 
into the Virgin Mary, a new nomenclature was given to the old materia 
theologica : the demigods were turned into saints ; the exploits of the 
one were represented as the miracles of the other ; the pagan temples 
became Christian churches ; and so ridiculously accommodating were 
the converters of the world to the prejudices of their pagan ancestors 
and neighbours, that we find, that for the express and avowed purpose 
of accommodating matters that the change might be the less offensive, 
and the old superstition as little shocked as possible, they generally 
observed some resemblance of quality and character in the saint whom 
they substituted to the old deity. " If in converting the profane wor- 
ship of the Gentiles to the pure and sacred worship of the church, the 
faithful were wont to follow some rule and proportion, they have cer- 
tainly hit upon it here, {at Rome) in dedicating to the Virgin Mary, 
the temple formerly sacred to the Bona Deo, or Good Goddess."* In 
a place formerly sacred to Apollo, there now stands the church of 
Saint Apollinaris, built there, as they tell us, in order that the profane 
name of that Deity might be converted into the glorious name of this 
martyr. 

Where there anciently stood the temple of Mars, they have erected 
a Church to Saint Martina, with this inscription, 

Mars hence expelled ; Martina martyr' d maid 

Claims now the worship which to him was paid.f 

It is certain that in the earlier ages of Christianity, the Christians 

often made free with the sepulchral stones of heathen monuments, which 

being ready cut to their hands, they converted to their own use, and 

turning downwards the side on which the old epitaph was engraved, 

* Si nel rivoltare il profano culto de gentili net sacro e vero, osservarano i 
fedeli qualche proportione, qui la ritrovarona assai conveniente nel dedicare a 
Maria virgine un tempio, ch'era della Bona Dea. — Rom. Med. Gior. 2. Rion di 
Rissa, 10. 
f The inscription of course is in Latin, and this it is— 

Martyrii gestans virgo Martina coronam 
Ejecto hinc Martis numina Templa tenet 



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RESEMBLANCE. 



223 



used either to inscribe a new one on the other side, or leave it perhaps 
without any inscription at all. This has frequently been the occasion 
of ascribing martyrdom and saintship to persons and names of mere 
Pagans. 



THE PANTHEON. 



The noblest heathen temple now remaining in the world, is the 
Pantheon or Rotunda, which, as the inscription over the portico informs 
us, having been impiously dedicated of old by Agrippa to Jove and all 
the Gods, was piously reconsecrated by Pope Boniface the Fourth to 
the Mother of God and all the Saints.* 



Inscriptions in Pagan Templesf 

1. 

To Mercury and Minerva, 

Tutelary Gods. 

2. 

To the Gods who preside over this 

Temple. 

3. 

To the Divinity of Mercury, 

the availing, the powerful, 

the unconquered. 



Inscriptions in Christian Churches^ 

1. 

To St. Mary and St. Francis, 

My Tutelaries. 

2. 

To the Divine Eustorgius, 

who presides over this Temple. 

3. 

To the Divinity of St. George, 

the availing, the powerful, 

the unconquered . 



* The inscription is— 

PANTHEON, &c. 

AB AGRIPPA AOGUSTI GENERO 

IMPIE JOVI, C&TERISQUE MENDACIBUS DfIS, 

A BONIFACIO IIII. PONTIFICE 

DEIPARJE ET S. S. CHRISTI MARTYRIBUS PIE 

DICATUM, 

&C. 



t 1. Mercurioet Minervae, Diis 

Tutelarib. 
2. Dii qui huic templo president 

3. Numini Mercurii, polienti, potenti, 

invicto. 

4» Diis Deabus que cum Jove. 

Gruter's Inscriptions. 



f 1. Marie et Francisce, Tutelaries 

mei. 

2. Divo Eustorgio, qui huic templo 

prasidet. 

3. Numini Divi Georgii, polienti, 

potenti, invicto. 

4. Divis prastitibus juvantibus,Georgio 

Stephanoque, cum Deo Opt. Max. 

Boldonius's Epigraph*. 



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9* RESEMBLANCE. 

Inscription in Pagan Temples. Inscriptions in Christian Churcha. 

4. 4. 

Sacred Sacred 

To the Gods To the presiding helpers, 

and Goddesses St. George and St. Stephen, 

with with 

Jove the Best and the Greatest. G6d the Best and Greatest, 

fi. 5. 

Apollo's Head, Venus's Pigeon, 

surrounded with rays of glory. surrounded with rays of glory. 

6. 6. 

The mystical letters The mystical letters. 

IHS, IHS, 

Surrounded wtth rays of glory. surrounded with rays of glory. 

AringhuSy in his account of subterraneous Rome, acknowledges this 
conformity between the Pagan and Christian forms of worship, and de- 
fends the admission of the ceremonies of heathenism into the service of 
the church, by the authority of the wisest prelates and governors, who 
found it necessary, he says, in the conversion of the Gentiles to dis- 
semble and wink* at many things, and yield to the times ; and not to 
use force against customs which the people were so obstinately fond of, 
nor to think of extirpating at once every thing that had the appearance 
of profane, but to supersede in some measure the operation of the sacred 
laws, till these converts, convinced by degrees, and informed of the 
whole truth, by the suggestions of the Holy Spirit, should be content to 
submit in earnest to the yoke of Christ f 



SAINTS AND MARTYRS THAT NEVER EXISTED. 

The last often thousand features of resemblance between Paganism 
and Christianity, which might be adduced to establish their absolute 
identity, which we shall care to notice, is the striking coincidence that 
the Christian personages, like the Pagan deities, were frequently created 

* '* And the times of this ignorance God winked a*."—- Acts xvii. 30. 
f Ac maximi subinde pontihces quam plurima prima quidem facie dissimu- 
landa duxere, optimum scilicet rati tempori deferendum esse ; suadebant quippe 
sibi, haud ullara ad versus gen tiliuos ritus vim, utpote qui mordicus a fideubus 
retinebantur, adhibendam esse ; neque ullatecus enitendum, ut quicquid pro- 
fanos saperet mores, omnino tolleretur, quinimo quam maxima utendum leni- 
tate, sacrarumque legum ex parte intermittendum imperiutn arbitrabantur.— 
Tom. 1, lib. 1, c. 21. 



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RESEMBLANCE, 395 

by errors of language, mistakes of noun substantives for proper names, 
ignorance of the sense of abbreviated words, substitution of one letter 
for another, &c. &c. so that words which had only stood for a picture, a 
cloak, a high-road, a ship, a tree, &c in their original use, were passed 
over in another language as names of gods, heroes, saints, and martyrs, 
when no such persons had ever existed. Thus have we a Christian 
church erected to Saint Amphibolus, another to Saint Viab — Christian 
prayers addressed to the holy martyr Saint Veronica ; and Chrestus 
adored as a god, by the ignorance that was not aware that 

Amphibolus was Greek for a cloak ; 

Viar, abbreviated Latin for a prefectus Viarum, or overseer of the 
highways ; 

Vera Icon, half Latin and half Greek for true image; and Chrestus* 
the Greek in Roman letters for any good and useful man or thing. 

Notwithstanding the idiot's dream of an imaginary pre-Protestant 
state of Christianity, or of Christianity in its primitive purity, ere 
what are called the corruptions of the Romish church had mingled with 
and defiled the stream, our Protestant historians are not able to make 
good their evidence of the existence of Christianity, in any time or 
place, in separation from the most exceptionable of those corruptions. 
Never was there the day or the hour in which Christianity was, and its 
corruptions were not. The thing of supposable rational evidence, his- 
torical fact, sublime doctrines, moral precepts, and practical utility, 
which we hear of in the coxcomb-divinity of an Unitarian chapel, is a 
perfect ens rationis, the beau ideal of conceit, that never had its type in 
history* Though the most accurate calculations satisfactorily prove 
that not more than a twentieth part of the Roman empire had embraced 
the Christian name before the conversion of Constantine, yet on the 
occasion of that prince's death, his historian, Eusebius,f tells us of 
masses which were celebrated, and prayers which were said for his 
soul in the Apostle's church, as a thing of course, and in a way in which 

* This mistake originates in what is called the " Iotacism," which consists in 
pronouncing the » like *. The modern Greeks give them both the sound of the 
Italian I or English E. This prevailed much in Egypt, and hence is frequently 
seen to take place in the Alexandrine MSS. Hence also Xpurros and Xptxrroj 
have been confounded; and Suetonius has written, " Judseos iropulsore Chresto 
assidue tumultuantes Rom& expulit." — EUUy's Annotations on the Gospels, 
vol. 1, p. xxx. 

But surely this will read quite as well if taken exactly the other way. It was 
as easy for the Christian evidence manufacturers to change E. into I, as for 
Suetonius to have changed I into E. 

f Euseb. Hist, of Constantine, book 4, ch. 71. 

29 2 P 



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£26 SPECIMENS OP PAGAN PIETY. 

it was impossible that such performance of mass and prayers for the 
dead could have been spoken of, had there been any contrary doctrine 
or practice known to Christ's church, of higher antiquity or of better 
sanction than they. 



CHAPTER XXXVI. 



SPECIMENS OF PAGAN PIETY. 

UpoQvpctKx. 

" The first of the Orphic* Hymns is addressed to the goddess 
XlpoQvpu*, or the Door-keeper, and as it is perhaps the most ancient 
monument extant of the adoration paid to the deity who was supposed 
to preside over child-births, and whom the Romans afterwards called 
Juno Lueina, or Diana Lueina," I present the reader with a literal 
translation of it, which I find ready made to my hand, in Parkhurst's 
Hebrew Lexicon : — 

" To Paothtbj&a! the Incense Storax. 

" Hear me, O venerable goddess, demon with many names, t and in 
travail, sweet hope of child-bed women, Saviour of females, kind 
friend to infants, speedy deliverer, propitious to youthful nymphs, 
Prothyrcea ! Key-bearer, gracious nourisher, gentle to all, who dwellest 
in the houses of all, delightest in banquets ! Zone looser, secret, but in 
thy works to all apparent ! Thou sympathisest with throes, but rejoices 
in easy labours; Ilithyria, in dire extremities, putting an end to pangs; 
thee alone parturient women invoke, rest of their souls, for in thy 
power are those throes that end their anguish, Artemis, llyttyw 
reverend Prothyrcea. Hear, immortal dame, and grant us offspring by 
thy aid, and save us, as thou hast always been the Saviour of all F— 
Lexicon, under the word o^> — to bring forth or be deliver ed.\ 

* Orpheus, or rather Onomacritus, lived 560 b. c. 

|- And what was to hinder the blessed Virgin May from being one of the 
names of this demon? Godfrey Higgins, Esq. in his most instructive and inter- 
esting History of the Celtic Druids, published a. n. 1827, states that he counted 
upwards of forty different names under the image of the Viigin at Loretto.— 
p. 109. 

t The reader will observe, that as the distinguishing attributes of the Pagan 



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SPECIMENS OF PAGAN PIETY. W 

A free poetical version of an hymn to Diana, expressive of her attri- 
butes, as generally believed and worshipped about the time of St. 
Paul, to the measure of the Sicilian Mariner's Hymn :— 

" Great it Diana of the stphesians"— Acts xix. 34. 

" Great Diana 1 huntress queen 1 
Goddess bright, august, serene 1 
In thy countenance divine 
Heaven's eternal glories shine. 

Thou art holy 1 thou alone, 
Next to Juno, fill's! the throne ! 
Thou for us on earth wast seen— 
Thou, of earth and heav'n the queen ! 

They to thee who worship pay, 
From thy precepts never stray; 
Chaste tney are, and just and pure, 
And from fatal sins secure ; 

Peace of mind 'tis their's to know, 
To thy blessed sway who bow : 
Chastest body, purest mind — 
Will, to will of God resign'd; 
Conquest over griefs and cares ; 
Peace — for ever peace is their's. 

bright goddess! once again 
Fix on earth thy heavily reign ; 
Be thy sacred name adorM, 
Altars rais'd, and rites restored 1 

But if long contempt of thee 
Move thy sacred deity 
This so fond request to slight, 
Beam on me, on me, thy light. 

Thy adoring vot'ry, I 

In thy faith will live and die ; 

And when Jove's supreme command 

Calls me to the Stygian strand, 

1 no fear of death shall know, 
But with thee contented go : 

divinities were represented in their statues, it was absolutely impossible that this 
Divine Virgin, kind friend to infants could be symbolized otherwise than 
as with a child in her arms. But such a representation could not possibly sym- 
bolize or distinguish the mother of Jesus from any other mother t 



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SPECIMENS OP PAGAN PIETY. 

Thou my goddess, thou my guide 
Bear me through the filial tide ; 

Land me on th' Elysian shore, 
Where nor sin, nor grief is more — 
Life's eternal blest abode, 
Where is virtue, where is God. 

First published in the Author's Clerical Review, in Ireland. 



THE PRAYER OF 8IMPLICIUS. 

There is a most beautiful prayer of the Pagan Simplicity, generally 
given at the end of Epictetus's Enchiridion, and almost the model of 
that used in our Communion Service, " O Almighty God to whom all 
hearts are open, all desires known," &c. The ideas are precisely the 
same ; the words and the machinery alone are a little varied. I find a 
ready-made poetical version of this, in Johnson's Rambler. 

" O thou whose pow'er o'er moving worlds presides. 
Whose voice created, and whose wisdom guides I 
On darkling man in pure effulgence shine. 
And cheer the clouded mind with light divine* 
Tis thine alone, to calm the pious breast 
With silent confidence and holy rest 
From thee, great Jove ! we spring, to thee we tend, 
Path! Motive! Guide! Original, and End!" 



THE CREED OF PYTHAGORAS. 

" There is one God, and none other but he."— Mark* xii: 32: 

God is neither the object of sense, nor subject to passion, but in- 
visible, only intelligible, and supremely intelligent In his body he is 
like the light, and in his soul he resembles truth. He is the universal 
spirit that pervades aud diffuseth itself over all nature. All beings 
receive their life from him. There is but One only God !! who is 
not, as some are apt to imagine, seated above the world beyond the 
rb of the universe ;* but being himself all in all, he sees all the beings 

• This sentiment of Pythagoras, so many years before the Christian era, is 
evidently the correction of some grosser form of demonolatry, which had pre- 
vailed in the heathen world before tne time of Pythagoras, and which had been 
expressed in such words as " Our Father, which art in heaven, 9 * &c. 



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SPECIMENS OF PAGAN PIETY* 999 

that fill his immensity, the only principle, the light of heaven, the 
Father of all. He produces every thing, he orders and disposes every 
thing ; he is the reason, the life, and the motion of all beings." — Dr. 
Colly er 9 * Lectures, quoted by Q. Higgins, Esq. Celtic Druids, 4to. 
p.J26. 

Mr. Higgins, adducing this bit of Paganism, exclaims, " How 
beautiful 1" But surely he would not think of putting these unsanctified 
notions of the Deity on a footing with the sublime description of the 
evangelical poet Dr. Watts, who, knowing so much more about God 
than Pythagoras did, tells us, 

" His nostrils breathe out fiery streams, 
He's a consuming fire ; 
His jealous eyes his wrath inflame, 
And raise his vengeance high'er /" 

Watts' s Hymns, book 1, hymn 42. 

The consolations and advantages which the Christian derives from 
the blessed light of the Gospel may be best appreciated by thus com- 
paring them with the darkness of Paganism : 

" So lies the snow upon a raven's back 1 



THE GOLDEN VERSES OF PlTTHAGOEAS. 

Of these, I supply a free poetical version, by the father of the late 
Mr. John Adams, of Edmonton, to whom I owe my prima elementa of 
literature. The Greek text is below.* 

Let not soft slumber close thine eyes, 

Before thou recollectest thrice 

Thy train of actions through the day : 

* Where have my feet found out their way? 

What have I learn'd, where'er I've been, 

From all I've heard, from all I've seen? 

What know I more that's worth the knowing? 

What have I done that's worth the doing 

* M*) vino* fxaXctKourif at oppo^i srpor&f a<r&tt 
IIpw tow 9)/xep»(i» cpyw rpK txMvrot tiri\Qut : 
lit) vaptfiriv; Ti 5'spjfa; t* fto* &o» ovx tTtXtoG*; 
Apfftfttyo? Pairo vpwrov f*rc£i9t. Kcct psrtvurx 
AuK» jaw i xTprjf aj, tviw\wrcrto> Xpwra it Ttpvov 



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830 SPECIMENS OP PAGAN PIETY. 

What have I sought that I should shun ? 
What duty have I left undone ? 
Or into what new follies run V 
These self-inquiries are the road 
That leads to virtue and to God." 



THE MORALS OF CONFUCIUS. 

The result of the learned researches of the pious Sir William Jones 
was, his established conviction " that a connection existed between (he 
old idolatrous nations of Egypt, India, Greece, and Italy, long befcre 
the birth of Moses.")— Asiatic Researches, vol. 1, p. 271. 

" The philosophic Baiilie has remarked, that everything in China, 
India, and Persia, tends to prove that these countries have been the 
depositaries of science, not its inventors."* 

Dr. Mosheim has proved the establishment of the Therapeutan 
monks of Alexandria before the time when Christ is said to have been 
on earth ; and that these Therapeutan monks were professors of the 
Eclectic Philosophy, avowedly collecting and bringing together the 
best tenets of moral philosophy which could be gathered from all the 
various systems of the world. They were, for this purpose, as well as 
to extend their power and influence, mighty travellers, and could not 
have failed of visiting China. Among the maxims which Kon-futz-see, 
or Confucius, the great Chinese philosopher, who had flourished about 
500 years before the birth of Christ, had left to that people, was the 
Golden Rule of doing unto others as " you would they should do onto 
you." 

This, the Therapeuts adopted into their Moral Gnomologue, or put 
into the mouth of the Demon of the Diegesis, from whence it passed 
into the copies or epitomes of the Diegesis, which have been falsely taken 
for the original compositions of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. 

Depending, as we necessarily must, on a translation, (for who that 
had to learn any thing else, could learn the language of the Chinese? 
I follow the edition by Josephus Tela, reprinted from the edition of 

* Mr. Higgins on the Celtic Druids, p. 52. On p. 45, of which, see "a 
lamentable example in the case of Sir William Jones himself, of the power of 
religious bigotry to corrupt the mind of even the best of men." The moral 
sensibilities of this great man could better abide the consciousness of the most 
wilful and scandalous misrepresentation, than to be just to the character of an 
adversary. Such are the triumphs of the Gospel 1 



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CHARGES. m 

1691 ; and collating this by the text of the New Testament, the reader 
will see that not only the idea is precisely the same, bat the rhythmus, 
manner, and manner of connection are precisely the same, beyond the 
solution of any hypothesis, but that the latter is a plagiarism. 

Confucius, St. Matthew. 

Maxim 24th. Chapter vi. verse 12. 

Do to another what you would Therefore all things whatsoever 

he should do unto you ; and do ye would that men should do to 

not unto another what you would you, do ye even so to them : for 

Dot should be done unto you. this is the law and the prophets. 
Thou only needest this law alone ; 
it is the foundation and principle 
of all the rest. 

The abridged form and more smoothly constructed sentence, accord- 
ing to canons of criticism already laid down,* demonstrates the later 
composition consequently the plagiarism. 



CHAPTER XXXVII. 



CHARGES BROUGHT AGAINST CHRISTIANITY BY ITS EARLY ADVER- 
SARIES, AND THE CHRISTIAN MANNER OF ANSWERING THOSE 
CHARGE8. 

After having fairly considered and compared the striking features 
of resemblance which subsist between the Pagan and Christian doc- 
trines, and also between the Pagan and Christian forms of worship, and 
giving due weight to the admissions which Christian divines and histo- 
rians have made touching that resemblance ! our method requires that 
we should take some account of such of the charges which their early 
enemies brought against them, as their fairness has transmitted, or 
their inadvertency has suffered to escape and come down to posterity. 
* We can never lose from this calculation, the plumb dead weight 
which Christians themselves have thrown into the adverse scale, by 
those arts of suppressing facts, stifling testimony, preventing the com* 
ing-up of evidence, persecuting witnesses, and destroying or pervert- 
ing the documents that were from time to time adduced against them, 

* See Canon 8, p. 103, of this Diegesis. 



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m CHARGES. 

of which they stand convicted by the concurrent testimony of all 
parties, and their own reiterated avowals, full often themselves*" glory- 
ing in their shame," and boasting of having promoted the cause of 
truth, by frauds and sophistications of which their heathen adversaries 
would have been ashamed. 

Were we in full possession, as in reason and fairness we ought to 
have been, of the writings of Porphyry, Celsus, Hierocles, and other 
distinguished and conscientious opponents of the Christian faith ; as 
they wrote themselves, and not as their adversaries were pleased to 
write for them, suffering them only to seem to make such objections as 
were ridiculous or weak in themselves, or such as Christian writers 
found themselves most easily able to answer ; the probability is, that 
the whole apparatus of Christian evidence would be beaten off the field; 
and we should be able to give the fullest and roost satisfactory explana- 
tion of those apparent defects in the manner by which those who held 
Christianity to bean imposture, ought to have assailed it, which cannot 
be ascribed to their deficiency of shrewdness, or insincerity of hostility. 

We see even in our own days, and the author of this work expe- 
riences in his own person, in the endurance of an unjust and cruel 
imprisonment,* and still to be continued bondage of ^ve years after the 
term of that imprisonment shall have expired, what sort of justice 
Christians would be likely to show to the arguments of their opponents. 
Were they orators whose powers of declamation their Christian 
adversaries must have despaired to cope with ? Why, their persons 
could be Oakhamized. Were they writers whose diligence of re- 
search, fidelity of statement, and strength of argument, could not be 
equalled ? Why, their writings could be suppressed, or kept back as 
much as possible from public knowledge; and then, to be sure, their 
Christian adversaries, in the guaranteed security that all that should 
be heard, and all that should be read, should be their preachings and 
writings only, would not only represent their opponents as the most 
contemptible orators and weakest reasoners in the world, but could 
father them with such miserable specimens of eloquence, and such 
jejune and feeble objections, as Origen would exhibit as the compo- 
sition of Celsus, and as Eusebius has invented for Porphyry. It was 
never to be endured by Christians, that an orator who opposed their 
faith should be believed to have been eloquent, or that a writer who 
confuted their opinions, should be thought to be reasonable. 



* This work was composed in Oakham Gaol. 



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i 



CHARGES. S33 

CHARGE 1. 

That THE CHRISTIAN SCRIPTURES WERE PLAGIARISMS FROM PRE- 
VIOUSLY existing Pagan Scriptures, is the specific and particular 
charge which the early opponents of Christianity ought to have brought 
against it, if that charge were tenable. The apparent not bringing 
forward of such a charge leaves in the hands of the advocates of Chris- 
tianity, the presumption that such a charge was not tenable ; and ergo, 
that the Christian Scriptures were the original compositions 

OF THE PERSONS TO WHOM CHRISTIANS THEMSELVES ASCRIBED 
THEM. 

THE ANSWER, 

To this, which is the pith of the whole argument, it is answered, 1st 
That though the charge had been tenable, it could not, from its own 
nature, have been brought forward, before the Christians had first 
brought forward a pretence that they were in possession of original 
Scriptures, and had permitted it to be generally known what those 
Scriptures were. But that pretence was not made till after the Chris- 
tian religion had been preached and established, and a large number of 
converts already made* without reference to, or any use made, or even 
the pretended existence of any Christian writings at all, nor till after the 
period when St. Paul says the Gospel had already been " preached to 
every creature under heaven."f 

After the substance of the matter which had thus attained extensive 
prevalence and general belief before it was committed to writings of 
any sort, appeared in written documents, it is not only not likely that 

* " Lardner shows advantages arising from a late publication of the Gospels. 
It was first requisite, he states, that the religion should be preached and established, 
and a large number of converts made. The apostles, says Eusebius, spread 
the Gospel over the world ; nor were they (at the first) much concerned to 
write, being engaged in a most excellent ministry, exceeding all human power ." 
EUUy's Annot. vol. 1 , p. 1 1 . What says reason ? 

t If ye continue grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope 
of the Gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature 
under heaven, whereof I, Paul, am made a deacon,' — Col. i. 23. Ov lywojAi* 
iyw Ha,v\Q<;$KZKOto;. 

When will men learn to see with their own eyes, and reason with their own 
understandings ? — 1 This Paul owns himself a deacon, the lowest ecclesiastical 
grade of the Therapeutan church. 2. This epistle was written two years before 
any one of our gospels. 3. The gospel of which it speaks had been extensively 
preached and fully established before the reign of Augustus 1 

30 2 G 



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234 CHARGES. 

the people who had been already " rooted and built up in the faith* 
without any service or help of such writings, should have much valued 
or sought for means of grace that they had so long done without ; but it 
is absolutely certain that they continued to do without them ; nor was 
it at any time within the three first centuries, that the general com- 
munity of Christians were permitted to know what the contents of 
their Scriptures were. 

And 2ndly. When the time had arrived that the charge of plagiarism 
against the Christian Scriptures, if tenable, should have been brought 
forward, the priests, in whose hands alone the Scriptures were to be 
found, had acquired such tremendous power and influence as to procure, 
by the decrees of Constantino and Theodosius, that all writings of 
Porphyry and others, that had been composed against the Christian 
faith, should be committed to the flames; and happy was the writer 
who got out of the way time enough to escape the fate of his writings. 



CHARGE 2. 

" Among the various calumnies with which the worshippers of Christ 
were formerly assailed/' says the learned Sebastian Kortholt,* " the 
first place is justly given to the charge that they had brought in new 
and unheard of rites, and that they sought to contaminate the holy 
purity of the religious ceremonies of antiquity, by the superstition of 
their novelty." 

THE ANSWER. 

From this charge the Christians only attempted to vindicate them- 
selves, by proving the most exact sameness and conformity of their 
doctrines and tenets to the purest and most respectable forms of the 
ancient idolatry : a mode of argument as serviceable to their cause, 
then, as in all inference of reason it is fatal now. Who would expect 
among the very first and ablest advocates of a religion that had 
been revealed in the person of a divine prophet who had appeared in a 
province of the Roman empire, under the reign of the emperor Tiberias 

* Kortholti Paganus Obtrectator, . Kiloni, a.d. 1698, p. 1. In extracts from 
this work, I claim the liberty of giving my own translation, without affixing 
more than the note of chapter and page from the original, except where there 
seems a strength in the original which the rendering might be thought to have 
enhanced. 



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CHAROES. 935 

inch admissions as those of their Justin Martyr, that " what we say of 
oar Jesus Christ is nothing more than what you say of those whom you 
style the sons of Jove ? As to his being born of a virgin, you have 
your Perseus to balance that ; as to his being crucified, there's Bacchus, 
Hercules, Pollux and Castor to account for that; and as to rising from 
the dead, and ascending into heaven, why, you know, this is only what 
you yourselves ascribe to the souls of your departed emperors/'* What 
short of an absolute surrender of all pretence to an existence distinctive 
and separate from Paganism, is that never-to-be forgotten, never-to-be 
overlooked, and I am sure never-to-be answered capitulation of their 
Melito, bishop of Sardis, in which, in an apology delivered to the 
emperor Marcus Antoninus, in the year 170,f he complains of certain 
annoyances and vexations which Christians were at that time subjected 
to, and for which he claims redress from the justice and piety of that 
emperor : first, on the score that none of his ancestors had ever perse- 
cuted the professors of the Christian faith, Nero and Domitian only, 
who had been equally hostile to their subjects of all persuasions, having 
been disposed to bring the Christian doctrine into hatred ; and even 
their decrees had been reversed, and their rash enterprises rebuked, by 
the godly ancestors of Antoninus himself." An absolute demonstration 
this, that all the stories of persecution suffered by Christians on the 
score of their religion are utterly untrue. And, secondly, the good 
bishop claims the patronage of the emperor for the Christian religion, 
which he calls our philosophy, " on account of its high antiquity, aa 
having been imported from countries lying beyond the limits of that 
Roman empire, in the reign of 'his ancestor Augustus, who had found 
its importation ominous of good fortune to his government." An abso- 
lute demonstration this, that Christianity did not originate in Judea^ 
which was a Roman province, but really was an exotic oriental fable, 
imported about that time from the barbarians, and mixed up with the 
infinitely mongrel modifications of Roman piety, till it outgrew the 
vigour of the stock on which it had been engrafted, and so came to. 
give its own character entirely to the whole system. 

The adoption of the fabulous Chriskna of the Hindus per convey- 
ance of the Egyptian monks into the Roman empire, having taken place 
in or about the reign of Augustus, gave occasion to later historians to 
pretend that Christ was born in the reign of Augustus ; and to all that 
confusion which arises from the adversaries of Christianity charging it 

* See this passage in its place and relevancy, in the Chapter on Junm 
Martyr. 
t See this also, under the head Melito, in this Dieoisis 



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** CHARGES. 

with novelty, while its earliest advocates challenge for it the highest 
and most remote antiquity.* 

CHARGE 3. 

In the edict of Diocletian, preserved in the fragments of Hermogenea, 
the Christians are called Manichees. It sufficiently appears that the 
Gentiles in general confounded the Christians and Manichees, and that 
there really was no difference, or appeared to be none, between the fol- 
lowers of Christ and of Manes. Let who will or can, determine the 
curious question, whether Manes and his followers were heretical 
seceders from Christianity, or whether those who afterwards acquired 
the name of Christians, were heretics from the primitive sect of Mani- 
chees. The admitted fact of the existence of upwards of ninety differ- 
ent heresies, or manners and variations of the telling of the Gospel 
story, within the three first centuries, is proof demonstrative that there 
could have been no common authority to which Christians could appeal, 
and, consequently, no Scriptures of higher claims than any of the innu- 
merable apocryphal versions, wherefrom to collect their opinions, or 
whereby to decide their controversies. It is admitted by Mosheim, 
that the more intelligent among the Christian people in the third 
century had been taught, that true Christianity, as it was inculcated by 
Jesus, and not as it was afterwards corrupted by his disciples, differed 
in few points from the Pagan religion, properly explained and restored 
to its primitive purity ;f so that these good people very conveniently 
found the way of swimming with the tide, and were converted to Chris- 
tianity, while they continued as staunch Pagans as ever. But this, of 
course, could be viewed by a modern advocate of Christianity in no 
other light than as an invention of the enemy ; however, it was neither 
a weak one in itself, nor unsuccessful in its issue. " Many were en- 
snared," says the Christian historian, " by the absurd attempts of these 
insiduous philosophers. Some were induced by these perfidious strata- 
gems to abandon the Christian religion, which they had embraced. 
Others, when they were taught to believe that Christianity and Pagan* 
ism, properly understood, were virtually but one and the same religion, 
determined to remain in the religion of their ancestors, and in the wor- 
ship of the gods and goddesses. A third sort were led, by these com- 

• Kortholti Pagan us Obtrectator, ch.l. p. 5. Pertinet huic quod Gregorius 
Nazianzenus affirraat, Christianum doctrinam veterem simui et noram esse. — 
Ibidem, p. 10. 

f Mosheim, vol. 1, cent. 3, chap. 2. Collate herewith the terms ot com- 
promise with Paganism offered by 6t. Peter, St. Paul St. Gregory, and other 
holy popes. 



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CHARGES. 937 

parisons between Christ and the ancient philosophers, to form to them- 
selves a motley system of religion, composed of the tenets of both 
parties, and paid divine honours indiscriminately to Christ and to 
Orpheus, to Apollonius, and the other philosophers and heroes, whose 
names had acquired celebrity in ancient times*" 

THE DOCTRINE OF MANES AND HIS HISTORY. 

Mani, properly so called, though more commonly Manes or Mani- 
chaeus, from whom the most important Christian sect that ever existed 
takes its designation, was by birth a Persian, educated amongst the 
Magi, or wise men of the East, and himself originally one of that order. 
The ecclesiastical historian Socrates gives us this account of him :— 
" Not long before the reign of Constantine, there sprang up a kind of 
heathenish Christianity, which mingled itself with the true Christian 
religion ; for in those days the doctrine of Empedocles, a heathen philo- 
sopher, was clandestinely introduced into Christianity. One Scythianus, 
a Saracen, had married a captive woman, native of the upper Thebais, 
and upon her account he lived in Egypt Having been instructed m 
the learning of the Egyptians, he introduced the doctrine of Empedocles 
and Pythagoras into Christianity ; asserting the existence of two natures, 
the one good, the other evil, as Empedocles did, and calling the evil 
nature Neikos (Discord), and the good nature Philia (Friendship), 
Buddas, formerly named Terebinthus, became a disciple of that Scy- 
thianus ; he travelled into Persia, where he told a great many stories 
of himself, — as, that he was born of a virgin, and brought up in the 
mountains. Afterwards he wrote four books : one of which was entitled 
the Mysteries ; another the Gospel ; a third Thesaurus, or the Trea- 
sury ; the fourth a Summary. He pretended a power to work miracles; 
but on one occasion, being on a high tower, the Devil threw him down, 
so that he brake his neck and died miserably.* The woman at whose 
house he had resided buried him, and succeeding to the possession of 
his property, bought a boy of seven years old, whose name was Cubricus. 
This youth she adopted ; and after having given him his freedom, and 
a good education, she bequeathed him all the estate she had derived 
from Terebinthus, and the books which he had written aocording to the 
instructions of Soythianus his master. With these possessions and 

• The reader who may find this entire passage in Dr. Lardner's Credibility, 
▼ol. 2, p. 141, will observe my variations from h. I take this liberty onl> upon 
the grounds of preference for my own translation of the original itself, which I 
have on my table, and with which I compare the text of Lardner through every 

sentence. 



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S98 CHARGES. 

advantages, upon the death of his patroness, Cubricus went into Persia, 
and changed his name into Manes, and there gave out the books which 
Terebinthus had thus composed, under the direction of his master 
Scythianus, as his own original works. These books bore a show and 
colouring of Christianity, but were in reality heathenish ; for the im- 
pious Manes directs the worship of many gods ; teaches that the Sun 
ought to be adored He introduces the doctrine of fatal necessity, 
and denies the free agency of man. He openly teaches the transmigra- 
tion of souls,* as held by Pythagoras, Empedocles, and the Egyptians. 
He denies that Christ was ever really born, or had real human flesh, 
but asserts that he was a mere phantom. He rejects the law and the 
prophets, and calls himself the Paraclete or. Comforter. All which 
things are from the true and right faith of the church of God. In his 
epistle he was not ashamed to entitle himself an apostle. At length his 
abominations met with their merited punishment" 

" The son of the king of Persia happening to have fallen into dan- 
gerous illness, his father, having both heard of Manichaeus, and believ- 
ing his miracles to be true, sent for him as an apostle, and believed that 
his son would by his means be restored. Upon his arrival he takes the 
king's son in hand, after the fashion of a conjuror A But the king 
having seen that the boy died under his hands, had him imprisoned, 
intending to put him to death : but he made his escape, and came into 
Mesopotamia. The king of Persia, hearing that he was in those parts, 
sent after him, and upon his second apprehension had him flayed alive." 
—This king of Persia was Yaranes the First 

Notwithstanding the calumnies heaped on Manes, Dr. Lardner has 
shown that he was, in the best and strictest acceptation of the term, a 
sincere Christian, and has adduced many passages from his writings 
equally honourable to his understanding and to his heart Not only 
the learned Faustus, J Bishop of Melevi in Africa, whose tremendous 
charge against the authenticity of our canonical Gospels we have else- 
where given; but others, by far the most learned, intelligent, and 
virtuous men that ever professed and called themselves Christians, were 

* The Pythagorean doctrines are still traceable in the Christian Scriptures: 
the Christ of St. John's Gospel is evidently a Pythagorean philosopher. Ye must 
be born again (John iii.), is the characteristic aphorism of the Pythagorean 
school. See the chapter xxxiii, entitled Pythagoras, in the Diegesis, p. 304. 

t Mit« w mvXourru ox*r M 'W tyxwp*^iT«* tw, &c. Dr. Lardner cuts me 
this knot with a skip in his rendering. 

J Faustus flourished about a.d. 384, at the latest, and had been known to 
Aogustin before that wily and mendacious saint apostatized from Manicheism to 
orthodoxy. 



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CHARGES. 239 

Manichaeans, and amongst these was the renowned St Augustin him- 
self, till he found that higher distinctions and better emoluments were 
to be gained by joining the stronger party. Whereupon he left the poor 
presbytery of the Manichsean church, to become the orthodox bishop of 
Hippo Regius : and from thenceforth, with the zeal that always charac- 
terizes a turncoat he set himself to heap all the calumnies and misrepre- 
sentations he possibly could upon that purer and more primitive Chris- 
tianity wliich he had deserted ; awkwardly enough confessing, that he 
himself should never have believed the Gospel, unless the authority of 
the church had induced him* (paid him) to do so. There are, I fear, 
more than nineteen out of any twenty bishops that could be named, who 
owe their orthodoxy at this day to the same sort of inducement. 



DEMONSTRATION THAT NO SUCH PEBSON AS JESUS CHRIST EVER 
EXISTED 

There were two very different opinions concerning Christ very early 
among Christians. Some, as Augustin says,t believed Christ to be 
God, and denied him to be man ; others believed he was a man, and 
denied him to be God. The former was the opinion of the Manichees, 
and of many others before them : of others so early, indeed, and so 
certainly, that Cotelerius, in a note on Ignatius's Epistle to the Tral- 
lians, assures us that it would be as absurd as to question that the sun 
shone at mid-day,J to deny that the doctrine that taught that Christ's 
body was a phantom only, and that no such person as Jesus Christ 
had ever any corporeal existence, was held in the time of the apostles 
themselves.§ Ignatius, the apostolic Father expressly censures this 
opinion, as having gained ground even before hit time. " If, as some who 
are atheists — that is, unbelievers— say, that he only suffered in appear- 

Ego evangelio nequa quam crediderim nisi ecclesiae auctoritas me commo- 
veret— - August, ut. citat Michaelis. 

t Ait enim Christus Deus est tantum, omnino hominis nihil habens. Hoc 
Manichaei dicunt. Photiani, homo tantum. Manichei, Deus tantum. — August. 
&rm. 37, c. 12. 

t As absurd as to question that the sun shone, #c. Solem negarot meridie 
iucere, qui Docetas, sea phantasiastas haereticos temporibus apostolorum infi- 
ciaretur eropisse.— Cotel. ad Ign. Ep, ad Trait, c. 10. 

§ Apostolis adhuc in seculo superstitibus, adhuc apud Judaeum Christi san- 
guine recenti, phantasma Domini corpus asserebatur.—ifimm. adv. Lucif. T. 4. 
P. 304. J 



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940 CHARGES. 

ance,"*— an expression which, as Coielerius observes, plainly shows the 
early rise of this doctrine. And from the apostolic age downwards, in 
a never interrupted succession, but never so strongly and emphatically 
as in the most primitive times, was the existence of Christ as a man 
most strenuously denied. So that though nothing is so convenient to 
some persons as to assume airs of contempt, and to cry out that those 
who deny that such a person as Jesus of Nazareth ever existed, are 
utterly unworthy of being answered, and would fly in the face of all 
historical evidence, the fact of the case is, that the being of no other 
individual mentioned in history ever laboured under such a deficiency 
of evidence as to its reality, or was ever overset by a thousandth part 
of the weight of proof positive, that it was a creation of imagination 
only. 

To the question, then, on what grounds do you deny that such a 
person as Jesus Christ existed as a man ? the proper answer is. 

Because his existence as a man has, from the earliest day on which 
it can be shown to have been asserted, been as earnestly and strenuously 
denied, and that, not by enemies of the Christian name, or unbelievers 
of the Christian faith, but by the most intelligent, most learned, most 
sincere of the Christian name, whoever left the world proofs of their 
intelligence and learning in their writings, and of their sincerity in their 
sufferings ; 

And because the existence of no individual of the human race, that 
was real and positive, was ever, by a like conflict of jarring evidence, 
rendered equivocal and uncertain. 



chabge 4. 

It was distinctly charged against the early preachers of Christianity 
that they had adapted and transferred to their own use the materials 
they found prepared to their hands, in the writings of the ancient poets 
and philosophers ; and by giving a very slight turn to the matter, and a 
mere change of names, had vamped up a patchwork of mythology and 
ethics, a mixture of the Oriental Gnosticism and the Greek Philosophy, 
into a system which they were for foisting upon the world as matter of 
a divine revelation that had been especially revealed to themselves. 
" All these figments of cracked-brained opiniatry and silly solaces 
played off in the sweetness of song by deceitful poets, by you too cre- 
dulous creatures, have been shamefully reformed and made over to 

* Ei it wnetp t*vij aSioi ora j, tout* taru OMnoro*, Xtyovcru to loxuv vcvorditttf 
avToi x. t. X. — Ign. ad Troll, c. 16, et passim. 



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CHARGES. 941 

your own God."* Such is the objection of Coecilius, in the Octavius of 
Minucius Felix, written in dialogue, about the year 211. A charge 
answered by admission, rather than denial, and corroborated by the 
never-to-be forgotten fact, that the Egyptian Therapeuts in their 
university of Alexandria, where first Christianity gained an establish- 
ment, were professedly followers and maintainers of the Eclectic phi- 
losophy, which consisted in nothing else but this very overt and avowed 
practice of bringing together whatever they held to be useful and good 
in all other systems ; and thus, as they pretended, concentrating all the 
rays of truth that were scattered through the world into the common 
centre of their own system. This is fully admitted by Lactantius, 
Arnobius, Clemens Alexandrinus, and Origen: and denied by none 
who have ventured fearlessly to investigate the real origin of Chris* 
tianity. 



CHARGE 5. 



Porphyry, f whose very name is aconite to Christian intolerance, 
objects against Origen, that, being really a Pagan, and brought up in 
the schools of the Gentiles, he had, to serve his own ambitious purposes, 
contrived to turn the whole Pagan system, which he had first egre- 
giously corrupted, into the new-fangled theology of Christians. 



CHARGE 6. 

Celsus, in so much of his work concerning the " true Logos, * as 
Origen has thought proper to suffer posterity to, become acquainted 
with, charges the Christians with a recoinage of the misunderstood 
doctrine of the ancient Logos.} 

Charges thus affecting the character of Origen, the great pillar ot 
the Christian church, cannot fell innocent of wound on Christianity 
itself. Origen is the very first of all the Fathers who has presented us 
with a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament* He 

* Omnia ista figmenta malesans opinionis, et inepta solatia, a poetis falla • 
cibus, in dulcedine carminis lusa, a vobis nimium credulis in Deum vestrum, 
turpiter reformata sunt. — Minucius Felix in Apol. 

t Porphyry. — Theodoret calls him Anrottos uf*«» voXtpw, and O itamm 
%\*xt ix$**T©f. Augustin calls him " Christianorum acerrimus inimicus." 

\ Quasi refingerent — T* To* waXowou Xoyou «rapowtoucrjiAaT».— Lib. 3. 
31 2 h 



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943 .CHARGES. 

was the most laborious of all writers; and his authoritative pen 
alone competent to produce every iota of variation which existed 
between the old Pagan legends of the Egyptian Therapeuts and that 
new version of them which first received from him the designation of 
the New Testament.* 



ADMISSION OF BISHOP HERBERT MARSH. 

Bishop Marsh, in his Michaelis, the highest authority we could pos- 
sibly appeal to on this subject,! admits, that " it is a certain fact, that 
several readings in our common printed text are nothing more than 
alterations made by Origen, whose authority was so great in the Chris- 
tian church, that emendations which he proposed, though, as he himself 
acknowledges, they were supported by the evidence of no manuscript, 
were very generally received.'^ The reader will do himself the justice 
to recollect, that Origen lived and wrote in the third century, and that 
" no manuscript of the New Testament now extant is prior to the sixth 
century; and, what is to be lamented, various readings which, as 
as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the 
Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are 
at present remaining."! 



ADMISSIONS TO THE SAME EFFECT, OF THE EARLY FATHERS. 

To charges of such pregnant inference, we find our Christian Fathers, 
in like manner, making answers that only serve to authenticate those 
charges; to demonstrate that they were founded in truth and not in 
malice ; and that, answered as they were, and as any thing may be, 
they were utterly irrefragible. 

" You observe the philosophers," says Minucius Felix, " to have 
maintained precisely the same things as we Christians, but not so is it 
on account of our having copied from them, but because they, from the 

* See the chapter on Origen. 

t " The introduction to the New Testament by Michaelis, latp professor at 
Gottingen, as translated by Marsh, is the standard work, comprehending all that 
is important on the subject." — The learned Bishop ofLlandaff, quoted in EUsley's 
Annotations on the Gospels, vol. 1. (the introd.), p. xxvi. 

I Michaelis's Introduction to New Test, by Bishop Marsh, voL 2, p. 368% 

§ Ibid, vol.2, p. 160. r 



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CHARGES. 243 

divine preachings of the prophets, have imitated the shadow of truth 
interpolated : thus the more illustrious of their wise men, Pythagoras 
first, and especially Plato, with a corrupted and half-faith have handed 
down the doctrine of regeneration/** And Lactantius, after admit- 
ting the truth of the story, that man had been made by Prometheus 
oat of clay, — adds, that the poets had not touched so much as a letter 
of divine truth ; but those things which had been handed down in the 
vaticination of the prophets, they collected from fables and obscure 
opinion, and having taken sufficient care purposely to deprave and cor- 
rupt them, in that wilfully depraved and corrupted state they made 
them the subjects of their poems.t 

Tertullian calls the philosophers of the Gentiles the thieves, the 
interpolators and adulterators of divine truth; alleges, that " from a 
design of curiosity they put our doctrines into their works, not suffi- 
ciently believing them to be divine to be restrained from interpolating 
them, and that they mixed that which ♦ was uncertain with what they 
found certain."^ 

Eusebius pleads, that the Devil, being a very notorious thie£ stole 
the Christian doctrines, and carried them over for his friends, the Pagan 
philosophers and poets, to make fun of.§ 

Theodoret accuses Plato especially, with having purposely mixed 
muddy and earthy filth with the pure fountain from which he drew the 
arguments of his theology. || 

Thus, if we may believe Eusebius, the beautiful fable of Ovid's Meta- 
morphosis, describing Phaeton falling from the chariot of his father, the 
Sun, was nothing more than a wicked corruption of the unquestionable 
truth of the prophet Elijah having been caught up to heaven, as de- 
scribed (2 Kings ii.), "Behold there appeared a chariot of fire y and 
houses of fire, and Elijah went up by a whirlwind into heaven; 9 ' the 
heathens being so ignorant as to confound the name Helias with Helios, 
the Greek word for the Sun. 

The almost droll Justin Martyr gives us a most satisfactory expla- 

* Quoted in Paganus Obtrectator, p. 34. 

t Lactantii Instit. lib. 3, cap. 13. Sic etiam conditionem renascendi, sapieo- 
tium clariores, Pythagoras primus, et precipuus Plato, corruptaetdinudiata fide 
teadiderunt. — Min. Felix. 

X Tertui. Apolog. cap. 46, 47. 

§ KXevrflf yap o Autfiokos kou t« ti/AiTtp* ex$ Epopudw vpoq rou$ taviw wro 
$hto$. — Euseb. procudubio sed perdidi locum. 

II E? US outoj Xa/Swy rug SwXoywtj r»s aQoyjvxs to AwJi; xa* yualti tcn^a. — 
Tteodoritus Therapeut., libto 2. de tlutwie ioquens. 



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944 CHARGES 

nation of the whole matter ; that "it having reached the devil's ear* 
that the prophets had foretold that Christ would come for the purpose 
of tormenting the wicked in fire, he set the heathen poets to bring for- 
ward a great many who should be called (and were called) sons of Jove. 
The Devil laying his scheme in this, to get men to imagine that the 
true history of Christ was of the same character as those prodigious 
fables and poetic stories."* 

I render from the beautiful Greek of Theodoret, a passage of consider- 
able elegance, in which the reader will trace the rising dignity of style, 
superior manner, and cultivated taste with which an historian of the 
fourth century could improve and varnish the awkward sophistry of the 
honester Christian Father of the second :— 

"But if the adversaries of truth (our Pagan opponents) so very much 
admired the truth, as to adorn their own writings even with the smallest 
portions they could pillage from it, and these, though mixed with much 
falsehood, yet dimmed not their proper beauty, but shone like pearl* 
resplendent through the squalors in which they lay, so that, according 
to the evangelical doctrine, the light shone in the darkness, and by the 
darkness itself was not concealed: we may easily understand how 
lovely and admirable the divine doctrines must be, secerned from false- 
hood, for so differs the gem in its rough matrix, from what it is when 
seen resplendent in a diadem."1 



charge 7 

The Emperor Julian— who, with all his imperfections on his head, 
was an ornament to human nature, and can by no means be conceived 
to have wanted any possible means of information on the subject— 

* Axowerarri* y«p **paynwn>/Aiw to» xpurrw, xou xoX*9*wo/<iiwwf lut wps 
tow* aart(3ai 9 9rpoi0aXXo»TO uroXXow? Xi;e$*i»** Xiyo/uuwwf wiow? t« *m, *©/**£ornf 
$wvxrt<r§ou mpyurcu Tip*roXoy**» nyn<ra<r§cu tow* *»&pwwov« t« tw xt**™*** *** 
ofMiuq Toi$ wo twv iroinrwf Xs;c§Mcr». — *^ tt *'* w * Apoiog. 2 

t E* h xou « tdj *Xn&iiflK *tnva*M ovtw xo/uufo *w/**£w<ti rw aXi&tun, am 
*** jfyaxwi iMfioi$ ixM&w<ri<rwXnjutfvoK &fluu*Xvrip t* o»xu* fvxXP*/*/** 7 ** *** 
?aroXX« >)/wli* t«wt« luywyLn* /au «p/3Xvu» Toer$iTipo» xoXXo?, aXXot xa> xorpw 
xeu ^opwTeo xii/ucMV( row* /xapyaptTa* currfCUFTur X*«», xeu x«t* n»f ivayyttMW 
^WxaXwcy, to $«*> if t«i encor** Qoutw, xm v*o mt <rx<m*ff, pn xfvrrvrXu 
{wm&u f otitic, ortti wrnt «{iip*<rr* xou afyvy****** 9«a jAfltS*i/**T» tow +iwJowj 
x*£wpi<r/Aiw iroXXw you)n*ov Jiaftopaf i^h jA*py*pi«ni; t» £*p£wpw xo/juk* *«* 
»J*aVaTiXa/A*w.— Theodore*. Therapeut. libro 2. 



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CHARGES. 945 

objects against the claims of Christianity, what a thousand testimonies 
confirm, that it was a mixture of the Jewish superstition and Greek 
philosophy, so as to incorporate the Atheism of the one with the loose 
and dissolute manner of living of the other. " If any one," says he, 
" should wish to know the truth with respect to you Christians, be will 
find your impiety to be made up partly of the Jewish audacity, and 
partly of the indifference and confusion of the Gentiles, and that ye 
have put together, not the best, but the worst characteristics of them 
both."* 

The answer to which charge, on the parts of the advocates of Chris* 
tianity, was, that they neither took them to be gods whom the Gentiles 
considered to be such, and so were not assimulated to the Gentiles ; nor 
did they respect the deisidemony of the Jews, and so were not adher- 
ents to Judaism. Nor was it a small matter of triumph to their cause, 
to contrast the apparent contrariety of charges that were alleged against 
them, in that as Julian accused them of adopting the worst parts of 
Gentilism, Celsus had accused them of selecting the best parts. 



THE CHARGES OF CELSUS. 

It is never to be forgotten, that the charges of Celsus stand only in 
the language in which Origen has been pleased to invest them ; nor is it 
any very monstrous phenomenon that auch wholly different characters 
as Julian and Celsus were, should either of them, with equal conscien- 
tiousness, have esteemed those selfsame things the best, which the other 
considered the worst parts of Gentilism. 

Celsus, an Epicurean philosopher, might very naturally think that an 
impostor acted with sound policy in giving to his new-fangled system 
all the advantages it could derive from the closest convenient conform- 
ity to the Epicurean carelessness of living, and indulgence in innocent, 
or e?en in perhaps not quite innocent pleasures ; while Julian, all 
whose virtues were of the severest and most rigid self-restraint, looked 
with horror on the licence which the doctrines of the apostolic chief of 
sinners had seemed to countenance in the lives and manners of the 

Em* vrtf VjMiy i9»tot wtovut lupwu *tt vyArtm ortfitM* ixti rut mituxnt 
tttywK kou rms ffapa to*$ idytcru f $*«$op»»? xgm %uda*oT>jTo$ avyxH/xirnv, «{ aufo» 

Julian apud Cyrill, lib. 2. X X 



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916 CHARGES 

Christians. The charge of the emperor Julian is in striking coinci- 
dence of verisimilitude with the apparent fact of the case, that Paul of 
Tarsus, who, in his Epistle to the Colossians, calls himself a deacon of 
the Gospel,* and who could have stood in that humble grade, only as a 
servant and missionary from the Therapeutan college; schismatised 
from the church, and set up in trade for himself. He opposed the 
ascetic discipline in which he had been trained, and thus drew to his 
party that large majority of ignoramuses which in all ages and countries 
are eager to embrace every part of superstition but its mortifications 
and restraints. There were innumerable other charges brought against 
the early Christians, which, as they impinge on their moral character 
only, and might be either true or false without materially affecting the 
evidences of the religion they professed, lie beyond the scope of this 
Ddsoesis. Their amount in evidence is, that they sustain the feet, that 
whatever the principles and conduct of Christians may be supposed to 
have been, they were never such as to conquer the prejudices or to 
conciliate the affections of their fellow men. Tacitus, Suetonius, and 
Pliny have spoken of them in the most disparaging terms ; and though 
it might be that those really wise and good men were unfairly pre- 
judiced, yet it must cost any man who is not prejudiced himself, an 
effort to think so. 



CHAPTER XXXVIII. 

CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES ADDUCED FROM CHRISTIAN WRITINGS. 

The New Testament is in every one's hands : the claims of the four 
gospels therein contained we have already considered. 

The thirteen epistles, purporting to have been written by an early 
convert to Christianity, who was before a blasphemer, a persecutor, and 
injurious ;f the anonymous epistle to the Hebrews; the one of James; 
one of Jude ; two of Peter ; three of John : and the Apocalypse, or 
Revelation of St. John the Divine ; though all of them, except the 
Apocalypse, are admitted to have been written before any one of the 
four gospels ; are entirely without date, and will read as well to an 
understanding or supposition of their having been written five or six 

• That is the Greek text. t 1 Tim. i. 1 3. 



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CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. tJT 

hundred, or even a thousand yean either earlier or later than the 
period to which they are usually assigned. Certain it is, that they con* 
tain not a single phrase of a nature or significancy to fix, with any satis- 
factory probability, the time when they were written ; but from begin- 
ning to end they proceed on the recognition of an existing church 
government and an established ecclesiastical polity which, on the sup- 
position of its origination in events that happened later than the time of 
Augustus, must outrage all our knowledge of history, and all common 
sense, to be reconciled with the supposition of tbeir having been 
written by the persons to whom they are ascribed : as 'tis certain that 
no such state of church government, that could be properly called Chris* 
tian, existed or could have existed among the followers of a religion 
which had originated in the age of Augustus, or among any persons who 
had been his contemporaries. 

The Acts of the Apostles is evidently a broken narrative, and gives 
us no account whatever of what became of the immediate disciples of 
Christ, or how or with what success they executed the important com- 
mission they had received from their divine master ; save that Judas 
the traitor is said to have come to a violent death, as a judgment of 
God upon his perfidy ; and that Peter and John were imprisoned as im- 
postors, after having received the Holy Ghost, and being endued with 
the gift of speaking all the languages of the earth (a miracle which no 
rational being on earth believes) ; and that James was put to death by 
Herod. 

The last account we have of Peter in the sacred history, requires us to 
believe, that after having been delivered from prison by the intervention 
of an angel, his chains falling off, and the ponderous iron gate opening 
of its own accord, " he went down from Judea to Caesarea, and there 
abode."* 

The last we learn of Paul is, that " Paul dwelt two whole years in 
his own hired house, andreceived all that came unto him ; preaching the 
kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord 
Jesus Christ, with all confidence, no man forbidding him." 

The evident aim and air of this account, as far as it goes, is palpably 
incompatible with any notion of the apostles having suffered martyrdom ; 
it rather seems to make an ostentation of their prodigious success, and 
their perfect prosperity and security, and that too in Rome, in the 
immediate neighbourhood, and under the government of the tyrant 
Nero : while the insinuation, at least, with respect to the melancholy 
end of Judas, is, that the apostles themselves would have considered 

* Acts, xii. 19. 



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918 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

martyrdom as dishonourable to their religion, and their being pat to 
violent and cruel deaths, an indication of the divine displeasure, as it is 
evidently represented to have been, upon Judas.* 

The names and orders of the twelve apostles, in the last list we have 
of them, are 

1. Peter, 5. Philip, 9. James Alpheus, 

2. James, 6. Thomas, 10. Simeon Zelotes, 

3. John, 7. Bartholomew, 11. Jude, the brother of James, 

4. Andrew, 8. Matthew, 12. Matthias. 



In the Lives of the Apostles, written by the eunuch Dorothea, 
bishop of Tyrus, who died a. d. 366, we have the following brief 
account of the apostles respectively : 

1. SIMON PETER. 

Simon Peter is the chief of the apostles. He, as we are given to 
understand by his epistles, preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus 
Christ in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Bithynia, and in the end preached 
at Rome, where, afterwards, he was crucified, the third kalends ot 
July, under Nero the emperor, with his head downwards (for that was 
his desire), and there also buried. 

2. James. 

James, the son of Zebedee, a fisherman, preached the Gospel of our 
Lord Jesus Christ unto the twelve dispersed tribes. He was slain with 
the sword, by Herod the tetrarch, in Judea, where also he was buried. 

3. John. 

John, the brother of James who was also an evangelist, whom 
the Lord loved, preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in Asia. 
The emperor Trajan exiled him into the Isle of Patmos for the word of 
God, where he wrote also his gospel, the which afterwards he published 
at Ephesus, by Gaius, his host and deacon. After the death of Trajan, 
he returned out of the Isle of Patmos, and remained at Ephesus, until 
he had lived a hundred and twenty years, at the end of which, he being 
yet in full health and strength (for the Lord would have it so), digged 
his own grave, and buried himself alive. There are some which write 

* See this question settled ia the chapter on Martyrdom. 



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CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 949 

that he was not banished into the Isle of Patmos under Trajan, but in 
the time of Domitian, the son of Vespasian. 

The translator of this John, St. Jerome, quotes the authority of 
Tertullian to prove, that in the time of Nero, he was thrown at Rome 
into a tun of hot boiling oil, and thereby he took no harm, but came 
forth after his trial purer than when he went in. St. Augustin relates, 
that " after St. John had made his grave at Ephesus, in the presence 
of divers persons, he went into it alive, and being no sooner in, and as 
appeared to the by-standers dead, they threw the earth in upon him, 
and covered him ; but that kind of rest was rather to be termed a state 
of sleep than of death ; for that the earth of the grave bubbleth and 
boileth up to this day after the manner of a well, by reason of John 
resting therein and breathing — a sign that he only slumbereth there, 
but is not really dead ! And till Christ shall come again, thus he 
remains, plainly showing that he is alive by the heaving up of the 
earth, which is caused by his breathing ; for the dust is believed to 
ascend from the bottom of the tomb to the top, impelled by the state of 
him resting beneath it. Those who know the place, 1 * adds this con- 
scientiously veracious Father, " must have seen the earth thus heave 
up and down ; and that it is certainly truth, we are assured, as having 
heard it from no light-minded witnesses."* 

4. Andrew, 

The brother of Simon Peter, as our elders have delivered unto us, 
preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unto the Scythians, Sog- 
dians, Sacians, and in the middle Sebastopolis inhabited of wild Ethio- 
pians. He was crucified by jEgeas, king of the E$Lessaeans, and buried 
at Patris, a city of Achaia. 

5. Philip. 

Philip, of the oity of Bethsaida* preached the Gospel in Phrygia ; he 

* " IdemAugustinus asserat Apostolum Johannem vivere atque in illo sepul- 
chre* ejus, quod est apud Ephesum, dormire eum potius quam mortuum jacere 
contendat. Assumat in argumentura quod illic terra sensim scatere et quasi 
ebulliere perhibeatur, atque hoc ejus anhelitu fieri. Et cum mortuus putaretur, 
sepultum fuisse dormientem, et donee Ohristus veniat, sic manere, suamque 
vitam scaturigine pulreris indicare : qui pulris creditur ut ab imo ad super- 

ficiem tumuli ascendat statu quescentis impelli Viderint qui locum sciunt— 

quia et rerera, non a levibus horninibus id audi?imus. Ad hanc rem satis 
superque satis testificandum lUor.—Fabricii Godice Apocrypha, torn. 2, p. 590. in 
notis. 

32 2 I 



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950 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

was honourably buried at Hierapolis, with his daughters. In Acts viS. 
39, Philip is described as possessing the power of rendering himself 
invisible. 

6. Thomas 

As it hath been delivered unto us,* preached the Gospel of our 
Saviour Jesus Christ unto the Parthians, Medes, and Persians ; he 
preached also unto the Caramans, Hircans, Bactrians, and Magicians I 
He rested at Calamina, a city in India, being slain with a dart, where 
he was also honourably buried. 

7. Bartholomew 

Preached the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ unto the Indians, and 
delivered unto them the gospel of Matthew. He rested, and was buried 
in Albania, a city of Armenia the Great. 

The translator, Peter de Natalibus, inform us , that this St. Bartho- 
lomew was nephew to the king of Syria. Antonius, in his Chronicle, 
writeth, that some have delivered that he was beaten to death with 
cudgels ; some, that he was crucified with his head downwards ; others, 
that he was flayed alive ; and others, that he was beheaded, at the 
commandment of Ptolemseus, king* of India ; but Peter de Natal, 
together with Abdias, bishop of Babylon, reconcile the whole in this 
manner : how that the first day the apostle was beaten with cudgels, 
the second day crucified and flayed alive, and afterwards, while yet he 
continued to breathe, beheaded. 

With all due respect to such profoundly learned authorities, I could 
suggest another way *>f reconciling the whole matter. This royal 
apostle was especially distinguished for his miraculous power of render- 
ing himself invisible, and slipping through the key-hole into bed- 
chambers, for the great convenience of giving lectures to young ladies, 
on the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary.f This faculty he 
possessed in common with St. Philip. 

8. Matthew, 

The evangelist wrote the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ in the 

* Surely this is a Tery suspicious sort of wording for the first and earliest 
testimony that can be pretended to the existence of so extraordinary a Thomas. 

f Et caepit qucrere Apostolum, sed non invenit cum ampHus. Factum est 
autem ut apparuit Apostolus ostio clauso in cubiculo ipsius dicens nihil carnak 
desidero sed scire te volo quia filius Dei in virginis Yulva conceptus inter ipsa 
secreta Virginia. Ohe I jam satis est J tcrque quaterque plus quam satis / 



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CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 261 

Hebrew tongue, and delivered it unto James, the brother of the Lord 
according to the flesh, who was bishop of Jerusalem, He died at 
HierapoHs, in Parthia, where he also was honourably buried. 

9. Jambs Alpheus. 

James, the son of Alpheus, was bishop of Jerusalem by the appoint* 
ment of the other apostles. He was killed by St. Paul Having been 
set by the Jews upon a pinnacle of the temple, Saul, who was after- 
wards called Paul, thrust him off; and while yet he breathed after his 
fell, one came with a fuller's club and brained him. 

10. Simon Zelotss. 

Simon Zelotes, that is, Simon the Fanatic, preached Christ through- 
out Mauritania and the Lesser Africa ; at length, he was crucified in 
Britannia, slain and buried. 

11. Jude. 

Jude, the brother of James, called also Thaddssus and Lebbaeus, 
preached unto the Edessaeans, and throughout all Mesopotamia. He 
was skin at Berytus, in the time of Agbarus, king of Edessa, and 
buried very honourably. 

These two apostles, St. Simon and St. Jude, are generally men- 
tioned together, and seem to have been inseparably united through the 
whole course of their truly incredible adventures. Their commemo- 
ration is kept by the church of England on the 28th of October. Their 
conjoint miracles of healing all manner of diseases, raising the dead 
till churchyards were completely useless, and worrying and tormenting 
the poor devils till they howled and squealed, and wished themselves 
back again in hell from whence they had issued ; are but every-day 
work, common to them with all the rest of the apostolic community. 
Bui they were more especially distinguished by their holy zeal, and their 
exertion of miraculous energies in protecting the moral character of 
those whom they had once admitted into holy orders. *" They 

* Habebunt autem secum discipulos raultos, ex quibus ordinabant per civi- 
tates presbyteros, et diacoaos et clericoi, et ecclesias multat coostituebant. 
Factum est autem ut unus ex diaconibus patesetur crimen incesti. £rat enim 
▼icinus filiae Satraps cujusdam ditUsimi hominis, qua perdita virginitate partum 
edens periclitabatur. Inttrrogata autem a parentibus virum Dei sanctum et 
castum Euphrosinum diaconum impetebat. Qui tentus a parentibus puelle 
urgebatur subire vindictam. Quod ubi Apostoli audiverunt, venerunt ad parentes 
puellae. At ills cum adspexissent apostolos, caperent clamare et diaconum 



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963 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

had with them many disciples, out of whom they ordained in every 
city, priests, deacons, and clerks, and for whom they built innumerable 
churches. It happened that one of their deacons was accused of crimi- 
nal conversation. The daughter of a wealthy satrap being found in 
the plight of the Virgin Mary, after she had received the salutation of 
the angel Gabriel, but not able, Hke her, to persuade the world that 
her pregnancy resulted from the obumbration of the Holy Ghost, upon 
being questioned by her parents, swore her child upon the chaste and 
holy deacon Euphrosinus, upon whom her parents were for taking the 
law; which, when the apostles St Simon and St. Jude heard, they came 
instantly to the girl's parents, who, upon seeing the apostles, loudly 
accused the deacon of the crime. Then the apostle said, * When was 
the child born? * And they answered, ' This very day, at one o'clock.' 
Then said they, * Bring the infant, and this deacon, whom you accuse, 
together before us.' And, upon the infant and the deacon being con- 
fronted, the apostles addressed the new-born babe, and said, ' In the 
name of our Lord Jesus Christ, speak and tell us if this deacon got 
you.' Whereupon the babe, with most perfect and complete eloquence, 
answered, * Gentlemen, I assure you that this deacon is holy and chaste, 
and has never, — — / (The reader must translate the rest on't for him- 
self — the young one was a bit of a wag.) But the parents of the girl 
insisted that the apostles should make the child tell (if the deacon was not 
his father) who else was. The apostles answered and said, * Oh, no ; 
it is our place only to absolve the innocent, not to betray the guilty."* 
There was evidently a good understanding between the apostles them- 
selves and the young one. 

i* 12. Matthias. 

Matthias, being one of the seventy disciples, was afterwards num- 
bered with the eleven apostles, in the room of Judas the traitor. He 
preached the Gospel in Ethiopia, about the haven called Hyssus and 

reum hujus criminis accusare. Turn Apostoli : quando iaquiunt natus est puer? 
responderunt hodie hora diei prima. Dicunt ei apostoli. Perducite hue infantem, 
et diaconum quern accusatis hue pariter adducite. Cumque in pnesentia essent, 
alloquuntur apostoli infantem, diceotes: " In nomine Domini nostri Jew 
Cbristi loquere, ed die si iste diaeobus pr&sumserit banc miquitatem." Turn 
infans absolutissimo sermone ait, " Hie diacOnus, vir sanottis et castas at et 
nunquam inquinavit carnem suam." Rurius autem insistebant parentes Apos- 
tolis, ut de persona infans interrogaretur incesti. Qui dixerant: nos inoo- 
centessoheredecet, et nocentes prodere non decet— -De SS. Simonc et Jnda 
Abdia Hittoria Apostolka, lib, 6, c. 18. 



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CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 358 

the river Phasis, onto barbarous nations and cannibals. He died at 
Sebastopolis, and was buried near the temple of the Sun. 

CEPHAS* 

It appears from the Catalogue of Dorotheus, that Cephas, who was 
one of the seventy disciples, and not one of the twelve apostles, was the 
person whom Paul reprehended at Antioch, and that he was bishop of 
Cannia. For though Cephas is a Syriac word of the same sense and 
signification as Peter, or Petra, a rock * yet have we this positive 
testimony of Dorotheus, who wrote earlier than Eusebius, and all the 
conceivable congruities of the case, supported by the explicit and posi- 
tive testimony of Eusebius, and of Clemens Alexandrinus, that Cephas 
and Peter were wholly distinct personages^ By this understanding we 
evade the revolting absurdity of the supposition, that Paul, a late con- 
vert, should have taken upon himself to withstand Peter to the face, 
when he was come to Antioch (Gal ii.), while we retain the other horn 
of the dilemma, that Paul has, in his first Epistle to the Corinthians 
(chap. xv.) f given an account of the resurrection of Christ, utterly 
irreconcileable with that of either of pur four gospels. J 



ORIGIN OF THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES. 

This critique is of most essential argument, inasmuch, as if valid, it 
tends to detect and cut off the sophistical artifice which would endea- 
vour to connect the narrative and probable part of the Acts of the 
Apostles with the mystical personages and adventures of the Gospel, 
thereby aiming to reflect something of the air of historical probability 
which attaches to the mere journal of the voyages and travels of some 
scMwnatical missionaries from the Egyptian monasteries, upon the 

It is in French only that the miserable pun on St. Peter's name is exact— 
" Tu es Pierri et sur cette pierre" The same is imperfect in Greek, Latin, 
Italian, &c. and totally unintelligible in our Teutonic languages. 

t Ho toropt* vap* KXtifttm — w n xeu Krtya*, vtpi ov Qncrn o TIavXo;, or« )» 
flWh Kt)$a$ a< Arooxuat x&ra vpoowrw *»r« arrnrrw, oti HaTtytwrptxts nv 
nft$im yvywiHU rw f/Sdopuxorra ptAvrw opamrpof Utrpot rvyyawrr* r* 
otootoXw.— Euseb. Ec. Hist. lib. 1, c. 12, C. 

J Neither the Peter nor the Judas of the Acts of the Apostles are the same 
characters as the Peter and Judas of the Gospels, nor can the two histories be 
feiriy reconciled. 



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*64 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES 

wholly supernatural dramatis persona of the Gospel, and to make the 
one seem a sequel and continuation of the other. 

To this device solely, we owe the canonicity of the Acts of the 
Apostles, an evident fragment as it is, and an awkward jumble of fie* 
tion and fact, romance and real history. It was held necessary (so as 
it were to "bring heaven and earth together) that some account, it 
mattered not what, should be crammed down the gaping throat of that 
natural curiosity which would want to know what became of the glo- 
rious company of the apostles after they had seen Jesus Christ ascend 
up through the clouds, pass through Orien's belt, and take his chair at 
the right hand of God. So late, however, as a. d. 407, or the begin* 
ning of the fifth century, the Acts of the Apostles had not gained 
general acceptance, or was rather too gross a finesse even for the 
credulity of the faithful. 

Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople at that time, in his first homily 
upon the title and beginning of this legend, says, " To many this book 
is unknown, by others it is despised, because it is clear and easy." The 
first of his homilies upon the whole book begins with the sentence, 
*' By many this book is not at all known, neither (the book) itself, nor 
who wrote and put it together.** 



CASE OF ST. JUDAS ISCABIOT. 

Judas Iscarioty though thrown out of the list of apostles, by an appa- 
rent conspiracy of the rest against him, had, in the contexture of the 
Gospel-story, certainly been chosen and appointed to the apostleship 
by Christ himself, had received and exercised the gift of miracles, had 
cast out as many devils, healed as many patients, and restored as many 
dead folks to life, as any of his apostolic brethren. His being the 
treasurer of the Mendicity Society, having the bag, and bearing what 
was put therein, is a strong presumption that he was the most trust- 
worthy among them. The sincerity and the intensity of his repentance 
for having betrayed Jesus — his returning the wages of iniquity which he 
had received, and above all, his offering himself to the imminent hazard 
of death, by coming forward and protesting to the innocence of his 
master, when all his other disciples forsook him and fled, and then ter- 

* TToXXotj rovro PiffXu* ouioriow yvuputoy tarn eurc auro, *ooti t ypt^*i a*f» 
%tu crvv&u; • — Tj, p. 1. Compare with Dr. Lardner's futile recalcitrauon, quoted 
in our Chapter of Admissions p. 38. 



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CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 30* 

urinating his own life in an agony of sorrow for his fault ; are alleviating 
considerations, which must render him, with all but bad- hearted 
people, rather an object of pity than of hatred ; and when Peter, who 
cursed and swore, and lied, and perjured, till the very cock crowed 
shame on him, was forgiven upon a wink, Judas must certainly be con* 
sidered as having been very unfairly used. But no ingenuity of critical 
chicane can reconcile the character of the Judas of the gospels with the 
personage who bears the same name in the Acts of the Apostles ; they 
are wholly different characters. 

The Judas of the Gospels The Judas of the Acts 

Repented ; Did not repent ; 

Returned the money to the chief Kept the money for his own use; 

priests and elders ; 

Cast it down in the temple, and Bought afield with it* 

departed; 

Died by his own act and will. Died by accident 



Next to the immediate apostles, in apostolic dignity, and first of all 
real personages whose existence there is no reason to doubt, however 
much there may be to question whether their adventures and per* 
formauces were such as have been ascribed to them, are the two un- 
apostolical evangelists, Mark and Luke, and that least of the apostles, 
who was not meet to be called an apostle,* Paul of Tarsus, the apostolic 
chief of sinner 8. f 

Mask. 

The evangelist, according to Eusebius, was bishop of Alex- 
andria. " He preached the Gospel," says Dorotheus, " unto the people 
of Alexandria, and all the bordering regions from Egypt unto Penta- 
polis. In the time of Trajan, he had a cable-rope tied about his neck 
at Alexandria, by which he was drawn from the place called Bucolus 
unto the place called Angels, where he was burned to ashes by the 
furious idolaters, in the month of April, and buried at Bucolus. 

Luke 
The evangelist,* of the city of Antioch, by profession a physician 

* 1 Cor. xr. 9. f 1 Tim. i. 15. 



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|66 CHRISTIAN EVIDENCES. 

($, *• a Therapeut), wrote the Gospel as he heard Peter the apostle 
preach, and the Acts of the Apostles as Paul delivered unto him. He 
accompanied the apostles in their peregrinations, but especially PauL 
He died at Ephesus, where he was also buried;* and after many yean, 
together with Andrew and Timothy, he was translated to Constan- 
tinople, in the time of Constantius, the son of Constantius Magnus. 

Paul, 

Being called of the Lord Jesus Christ himself after his assump- 
tion, and numbered in the catalogue of the apostles, began to preach 
the Gospel from Jerusalem, and travelled through Illyricum, Italy, and 
Spain. His epistles are extant at this day full of all heavenly wisdom, t 
He was beheaded at Rome under Nero, the 3d kalends of July, so died 
a martyr, and lieth there buried with Pater the apostle. — Thus far 
Dorotheus. 

Though there can be no doubt of the existence of St. Paul, of his 
being entirely such a character as he is in the New Testament repre- 
sented to have been, and that the epistles which go under his name are 
competently authentic, and such as without a most unphilosophical and 
futile litigiousness, no man would think of denying to have been writ- 
ten by him, excepting only a few immaterial interpolations ; yet for the 
feet of his having been beheaded by order of Nero, or having suffered 
martyrdom in any way, we have no better authority than such as those 
who would have us believe it, would be ashamed to produce ; that is, 
neither other or better authority than that of Linus, the imaginary suc- 
cessor of the imaginary St. Peter in the bishopric of Rome, who would 
persuade us, " that after Paul's head was struck off by the sword of the 
executioner, it did with a loud and distinct voice utter forth, in Hebrew, 
the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, while, instead of blood, it was 
nought but a stream of pure milk that flowed from his veins ;" or that 
of Abdias, bishop of Babylon, who assures us, that when his head was 

* The particular care with this historian shows for having all his saints and 
martyrs authentically buried is, to attest the identity of their relics, which 
retained their miraculous virtues for ages, and thus achieved as many miracles 
after their decease as they had ever done while living. From the time when 
these worthies were buried till the accession of Constantius must have been 
upwards of 300 years, so that in the natural order of things, every particle ct 
their bodies must have evaporated or mouldered away ; but Manet port funert 
virtus! 

t This heavenly wisdom js a very particular sort of wisdom. 



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CHRTSTIAN EVIDENCES. » 

cut 0$ instead of Wood, ran milk, so that the milky wave flowed all 
over the sword, and washed over the executioner's arm,* 

In a church at Rome, at this day called At the three fountains, the 
place where St Paul was beheaded, they show the identical spot where 
the milk spouted forth from his apostolic arteries, and where, moreover, 
his head, after it had done preaching, took three jumps, (to the honour 
of the holy Trinity), and at each spot on which . it jumped, there in* 
stantly struck up a spring of living water, which retains at this day a 
plain and distinct taste of milk. Of all which facts, Baronius, Mabillon, 
and all the gravest authors of the Roman Catholic communion, give us 
the most credible and unquestionable assurance. | 

It would be an injustice, however, to father such miraculous ac- 
counts exclusively on the writers of the Roman Catholic communion. 
We should not have even a single credible witness left to ascertain to 
us, that Christianity in any shape or guise, continued in existence, or 
what it was, after it passed the first to other hands, should we consider 
the most egregious, atrocious, impudent lying as a disparagement to 
the credibility of Christian historians. It is no fanatic or enthusiast 
who* is himself deceived, but it is the calm, serious, calculating, most 
sincere, most accomplished, most veracious St. Augustin, who, in his 
33rd Sermon addressed to his reverend brethren, fearlessly stakes his 
eternal salvation to the fact, which was as true as the Gospel, and for 
which there can be no doubt that he would as cheerfully as for the 
Gospel have suffered himself to be burned at the stake; that "he 
himself being at that time bishop of Hippo Regius, had preached the 
Gtjspel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ to a whole nation of men 
and women that had no heads, but had their eyes in their bosoms ; 
and in countries still more southerly, he preached to a nation among 
whom each individual had but one eye, and that situate in the middle 
of the forehead."^ While the no less credible Eusebius assures us, that 
on some occasions the bodies of the martyrs who had been devoured by 
wild beasts, upon the beasts being strangled, were found alive in their 
stomachs, even after having been completely digested. § 

Such statements, and ecclesiastical history is little better than a 

* Flexis r genibus,crucisque se signo muniens, cervicem praebuit percussori! 
E cujus gladio, desecto capite, pro sanguine lac cucurrit ita ut percussoris dex- 
tram lactea unda perfunderet. — Apostol. Hist. lib. 2, p. 455. 

f See the statement to the sense, not the letter, in Dr. Middleton's Letter 
from Rome, p. 127 

X Syntagma, p. 33. 

§ Lardner, vol. 4. p. 91 . 

33 2 k 



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9K CHRISTIAN BVIDBNCB& 

continued series of such, must surely -convince every impartial inquirer, 
that the professors and preachers of Christianity, however a few honour- 
able exceptions may have from time to time arisen, (as never was the 
society so bad, but that there mast have been some among them not 
quite so bad as the worst), yet generally they were men who had no 
respect for truth, and no governing principle but a wicked esprit at 
corps, which determined them & toute entrance to impose on the ere- 
duHty a*id ignorance of the vulgar 



That there is no difference between the Popish legends and the 
canonical Acts of the Apostks 

The great difficulty is to draw the line between ecclesiastical history 
and that which is truly apostolical ; since it is hardly possible to fix on 
a legend so egregiously absurd, or a pretended miracle so monstrously 
ridiculous, in all that is absurd and ridiculous in Popish superstition, 
but that its original type and first draft shall be to be found even in our 
own canonical and inspired Scriptures* 

After having laughed at St. Dunstan's taking the Devil by the nose 
with a pair of red-hot tongs, in the golden legend, we are made to laugh 
on the other side of the mouth, or rather to tremble and adore, at the 
account which nobody may doubt, of the fate of the seven sons of 
Sceva the Jew, in conflict with whom it was the Devil who proved 
victorious, and overcame them, and prevailed against them) 96 that they 
fled out of that house naked and wounded. Nor was the wonder- 
working name of " Jesus, whom Paul preached," sufficient to lay him ; 
for, said the Devil, " Jesus I know, and Paul I know, but who are 
you?" — Actsxix. 15. 

In like manner we Protestants, who despise all the stories of miracles 
wrought by old rags, rotten bones, rusty nails, pocket-handkerchiefe, 
and aprons ; that stand on no better authority than those monkish 
tales which our church has rejected, .do bow with implicit faith to the 
miracles wrought by relics, which stand on the authority of those 
monkish tales which our church has not rejected ; and it is to be believed, 
or at least not laughed at, under peril of being sent to jail, that " God 
wrought special miracles by the hand of Paul, so that from his body 
were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs or aprons, and the diseases 
departed from them, and the evil spirits went out from them."-* Acts 
xix. 12. 

Here again is an egregious atopism. How could St. Paul have 
aprons ? or what use could Jews have of pocket-handkerchiefs 1 Are 



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CHRISTIAN EVJDflNCftS " 289 

we to forget that their sleeves and beards answered all the purposes, 
and saved washing ? 

We are at full liberty to have our mirth out at the story of Sk Bar- 
tholomew possessing the faculty of becoming invisible, and appearing 
and disappearing, as the cause of the gospel required, because that 
story rests only on the authority of the apostolic history of Abdias, a 
few pages further on than our canonical Acta of the Apostles has 
continued to make extracts from it ; but had it been introduced; as 
many arguments would have been adduced by our clergy, to justify it, 
and as great peril of incarceration incurred for snuffing at it, as at 
precisely the parallel story of St. Philip, who, in the canonical part of 
the book, is described as riding in the air, as picked up by the Spirit of 
the Lord in one place, and popped down in another (Acts vi. 40). 

That no such persons as the Twebe Apostles ever existed. 

Thus the glorious company of the apostles, having glistened upon the 
world's darkness like the sparks on a burnt rag, go out in like manner, 
leaving no more vestige of their existence, or of any effect of the mira- 
culous powers with which they are believed to have been invested, than 
" the bird's wing on the air, or the pathway of the keel through the 
wave." No credible history whatever recognizes the existence of any 
one of them, or of any one result of all their stupendous labours and 
sufferings. The very criterion miracle itself the most critical and 
unportant of all, that which if not true, leaves not so much as. a possibi* 
lit j that any other should be so*~the miracle of the gift of tongues, not 
only has no one particle of concurrent evidence in all the world to make 
it credible, or even to make it conceivable, but absolutely breaks down 
and gives way, and is attended by positive demonstration of its false- 
hood, even in the immediatecontext of the legend which relates it In con- 
sequence, on the passage which instructs us that the assembled apostles 
were by the immediate power of God " enabled to speak all the languages 
of the earth in a moment of time," and thus unquestionably must have 
have been rendered the most consummate and accomplished scholars 
that ever lived, we find Peter and John, the most distinguished of them, 
in the next scene, brought before the magistrates as notorious tricksters 
and cheats, and then and there availing themselves of their supernatural 
gift of eloquence to no better effect, than to show that they were un- 
learned and ignorant msn, (Acts iv. 13). 

The Arabian Nights Entertainments are more consistent. Consult 
the records of history, and what has become of these most extraor- 
dinary personages that ever existed, if indeed they ever existed ? Not 



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900 THE ARGUMENT OF MARTYRDOM. 

only their names are no where to be found, bat the mighty works 
which should have perpetuated their names have no records. The 
churches which they are said to have founded, have all shared the 
fate of Aladdin's castle : the nations which they converted, have all 
relapsed into idolatry the light that was to lighten the Gentiles, only 
served to introduce the dark oca. Not only chronology and history 
withhold all countenance from the fabulous adventures of these fabu- 
lous personages, but geography itself recoils from the story ; not only 
were there no such persons as themselves, and no such persons as the 
kings and potentates whom they are said to have baptized and con- 
verted, but no such countries, cities, and nations as many of those in 
which they are said to have achieved their mightiest works. Like their 
divine Master, their kingdoms were not of this world. Where, for 
instance, was the country of the Magicians, of the Amazons, of the 
Acephali, the Monoculi, and the Salamanders ? Where but in the 
same latitude with Brobdignag and Lilliputa ? 



CHAPTER XXXIX. 



THE ARGUMENT OF MARTYRDOM. 



From the self-evident absurdity of all arguments drawn from mira- 
cles whieh could be of avail only to those who witnessed them, and 
even to them of no further avail than to make them stare and wonder, 
but to leave them in as great ignorance as ever as to the what then, or 
what inference, from an unaccountable fact to the truth or falsehood of 
an unaccountable doctrine, divines have been driven upon the dernier 
resort of a desperate attempt to connect Christianity with a species of 
historical evidence arising from the argument of martyrdom. 

Accordingly, in the .latest or at least most popular treatise on the 
Evidences of Christianity which is now read in our universities, and 
generally appealed to as exhibiting the whole stress of the cause set in 
the best light, and shown to the utmost advantage, the whole burthen 
is laid on these two propositions :— 

First. " That there is satisfactory evidence that many professing to 
be original witnesses of the Christian miracles, passed their lives is 
labours, dangers and sufferings, voluntarily undergone in attestation of 
the accounts which they delivered, anct solely in consequence of their 
belief of those accounts ; and that they also submitted, from the same 
motives, to new rules of conduct." 



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I HE AHOUMBNT OF MARTYRDOM. »1 

Second Proposition. " That there is hot satisfactory evidence that 
persons pretending to be original witnesses of any other similar mira- 
cles, have acted in the same manner in attestation of the accounts 
which they delivered, and solely in consecraence of their belief of the 
truth of those accounts."* 

Such are the specific propositions on which the whole fabric of the 
evidences of Christianity is raised, by that great master " of thoughts 
that are just, and words that are beautiful,"\ whose name and au- 
thority were urged to justify the cutting off from society of one whose 
only offence was, that he availed himself of thoughts quite as just, in 
words as beautiful, leading to only diametrically opposite conclusions. 

Not to quarrel with the logic of these propositions, nor waste a mo- 
ment's indignation on the apparent insult offered to the acutest sensi- 
bilities of our nature, in thus couching conditions involving the eternal 
happiness or misery of man, in terms whose laxity of purport and inde- 
finiteness of sense could intend no other drift than to evade conclusion, 
to disappoint solicitude, and to defeat examination ; 

We apply at once to this whole argument of martyrdom, these two 
grand conflicting propositions:— 

First, That sufferings undergone by the first preachers of Chris- 
tianity is not the kind of evidence which we have a right to expect that 
the good and gracious Father of mankind should have given to a reve- 
lation which he was pleased to make ; 

Second, That it is absolutely not true, that the first preachers of 
Christianity did undergo any sufferings whatever in attestation of the 
accounts which they delivered. 

In still briefer proposition, the argument of martyrdom is not true ; 
and it would be good for nothing, if it were true. 

L That Martyrdom is not the kind of evidence which we have a right 

to expect 

Against this first and primordial consideration of the business, a 
most preposterous and absurd war of nonsense and insolence is generally 
raised, to shelter and protect the desolation of the Christian argument. 
" Nay, but man, who art thou, that replyest against God ?" What 
right have we to demand that God should give to his revelation just 
such evidence as we please to think necessary ? 

* Paley's Evidences of Christianity. 

♦ Words of Sir James Scarlett, sold to the prosecution of the Author, in the 
Court of King's Bench October 24, 1827. 



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903 ffl* ARGUMENT OP MARTYRDOM. 

To all which sort of language, though disgracing the style of authors 
who have acquired the fame of critics, scholars, and rational men, on 
all other subjects, we have only to bid observance be awake to the 
petitio principii, or entire begging of the question, which it involves. 
For they who write or preach on the evidences of the Christian religion, 
must at least be supposed to hold out that they have some reasons or 
a guments to offer, which shall induce men who before did not believe, 
to become believers ; or those who before did in some degree believe, 
to believe with a stronger degree of conviction than they otherwise 
would: (which is a branch of the same general purpose): and to 
acquit themselves in the discharge of that duty which the apostolic 
injunction hath bound upon them — i. e, to be ready always to give an 
answer to every man that asketh them a reason of 4 he hope that is in 
them with meekness and fear J* But such an answer is a veto upon all 
reason, and a complete admission of entire inability to give one ; and, 
instead of indicating any disposition of meekness, is little short of an 
assumption to themselves of the most unqualified infallibility ; and 
brings their logic into a circle, which all rational men know at .once to 
be downright idiotcy. For not only must they maintain that the evi- 
dence was therefore proper, because it is such as God has been pleased 
to give, but that God has been pleased to give it, because it was proper ; 
thus assuming to themselves that very right which they impugn, and 
exercising that prerogative which they hold to be the highest pitch of 
impiety when claimed by other persons, or exercised to other ends than 
their's. 

And this, their argumentum in circulo, is spun upon the pivot of 
another sophism in logic, the assumptio ex post facto. The propriety 
and sufficiency of their evidence would never have been dreamed of, if 
it bad not been that such, and none other, was the best evidence they 
had to pretend ; and any other evidence whatever that they had chosen 
to pretend, they could just as well have pretended to be the proper and 
sufficient evidence as this. 

The impropriety of the argument as it respects the character of Go& 

A moment's conscientious reflection must surely lead any rational 
mind to a conviction how essentially immoral and unfit, and how 
egregiously irrelevant and inconclusive any such sort of evidence to a 
divine revelation must be, and make the very most of it, and concede 
the very utmost in its favour. Is it in the compass of invention to 

1 Pet. iii. 15. 



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THE ARGUMENT OP MARTYRDOM. 46* 

conceive any thing more unworthy of Gob ! more disparaging and 
subversive of all respectful and honourable apprehensions, which, who- 
soever believeth that there is a God at all, ought to entertain and culti- 
vate in his mind ? Or was there ever in the world a conceivable worse 
example of injustice and cruelty, than that involved in the supposition 
of the Almighty Governor of the universe choosing out his best and 
most accepted servants to send them on a message, the faithful delivery 
of which should bring on them the most horrible Bufferings, and most 
cruel deaths ? What else is a Moloch ? or Belial ? What other notion 
can we have of a demon ? What dye of grimmer blackness can be added 
to that monster of your conceit, whom you have described as dealing 
thus with those who love and serve him best : whom you pourtray as a 
tyrant, whose commissions are fatal to those who hold them, who pays 
his best servants with bloody wages, whose embassies of peace are 
borne on vulture's wings, whose charities are administered in works of 
destruction, whose tender mercies are cruel ? 

And what relevancy, pray, after all, between the sufferings which any 
set of persona may voluntarily undergo, and the truth or falsehood of 
any doctrines they may have maintained ? What consequence or 
connection between the endurance of punishment, and the utterance of 
truth, unless we have some means of being assured that it was impos- 
sible that any body should have been punished for uttering falsehood, 
and so outrage all notions of a moral government of the universe ? 

Do we, then, hold a revelation from God to be, in the nature of 
things, absolutely impossible ? — We answer, no I Then by what other 
possible means than those of miracles, and the sufferings of those who 
were the immediate channels of the divine communication, can we 
suppose the revelation to be conveyed ? " They shall no more teach 
every man his neighbour, Maying, Know the Lord J for they shall ail 
how him, from the least to the greatest ; for the whole earth shall be 
fiJUei with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the footers 
cover the sea. — Isaiah. 

A person who had sincerely persuaded himself of the divine authority 
of whatever purports to have been positively commanded or forbidden 
by Christ would never be seen to darken the doors of either church or 
chapeL— " Thou shall not be as the hypocrites are : Bui- thou, when 
thou pray est, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, 
fray to thy Father which is in secret/' What is the act, then, of attend- 
ing public worship, but an act of public hypocrisy? And whose autho- 
rity is it, that they respect, who fly in the teeth of so positive an inhi- 
bition ? 

But this would spoil religion as a trade; and therefore, like Christ's 



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9M THE ARGUMENT OF MARTYRDOM. 

professed indifference to the observation of the Sabbath,* and hi* 
most solemn forbiddance of oath -taking, f it becomes a dead letter, 
which every body reads, but nobody respects. 

The impropriety of the argument a$ tt respects the character of Man. 

With respect to the character of man, knowing and feeling as we do* 
in every sentiment of our minds, in every impression on our senses, 
our liability both to false impressions and erroneous ideas, and that 
these are competent to urge men to act and suffer to the same extent 
as the most accurate impressions, and the most mathematical conclu- 
sions ; that is* that men are, and have been in all ages, as ready to 
become martyrs for falsehood as for truth : We ask, 

How could sufferings, either voluntarily or involuntarily incurred, 
supply any sort of attestation to a doctrine ? 

If such sufferings be voluntarily incurred, when they might as well 
have been avoided, what is to excuse such wanton and useless suicide? 

Surely the act of suicide is precisely the same, if a man rushes on a 
drawn sword, which he sees held in another man's hand, as if he held 
the sword himself.-— And, 

What right can any man have to expect that other men should 
believe him affirming to a fact upon the testimony of his senses, when 
they see him setting the testimony of his senses at defiance, and not 
himself subscribing to the argument of pain and smarting 

If such sufferings were involuntary, where could be the merit, or 
what proof of the sincerity of the sufferers could they involve ? 

If such sufferings, in the natural course of things, were inevitable 
upon the conduct which the first preachers of the Gospel adopted, and 
God be believed to be the author and director of the natural court* of 
things, what stronger proof could God himself be conceived to give us 
that that conduct was wrong, and that that religion, which could only 
be propagated by such conduct was false ? 

Nor should we overlook the palpable injustice of the argameat 
built upon the long ago and probably greatly exaggerated sufferings, of 
the martyrs of Christianity, but which takes no account of the sincerity 
and self denial of its conscientious victims ; that sympathises like Nero, 
in dramatic griefs, but forgets its own Oakham ; weeps for the scratched 
finger of any of its own faction, but is at ease in an aceldama of perse* 
cuted infidels. 



•Matt.xii.8. f Matt v. 45* 



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J 



THB ARGUMENT OR MARTYRDOM. *G5 

Extraordinary fortitude, exhibited tinder great and cnwl sufferings, 
could only be considered as involving an argument for the truth of the 
Christian religion, on the supposition that such fortitude was properly 
and strictly miraculous ; a supposition directly outraging all notions 
of either goodness or justice in the Deity who should choose to work a 
sanguinary and horrible miracle, when he might at once have better 
accomplished the same effect by better means. — And, 

Lastly, in the case of Judas Iscariot, as given in the Acts of the 
Apostles* we have the judgment of the whole apostolic college on the 
side of our proposition ;* the horrible and cruel death of the traitor 
being there specifically adduced as an argument of the divine displea- 
sure against him; thereby demonstrating that, in the judgment of the 
apostles themselves, the coming to a bad end should be read to the 
diametrically opposite inference of that of martyrdom; that we should 
rather conclude, " that so bad a death argues a monstrous life;" and 
that the good and gracious Father of mankind would never have suffered 
those who had sought to please him, or preached a doctrine that was 
agreeable to him, to have had any occasion to suffer for it. 

IL That the argument of martyrdom if abtolutely not true, 

Is demonstrable, distinctively, on these four grounds: 1st. That it is 
contrary to nature ; 2nd, That it is icontrary to the general tenor of 
the New Testament itself; 3d, That it is contrary to the evidence of 
history ; 4th, that it is positively denied by the very authorities on 
whose testimony alone it could be pretended. 

1st It is contrary to nature. — Credulity and easiness of belief are 
the essential characteristics of man, and especially of ignorant man. 

There was nothing, and could have been nothing in the lives and 
conduct of such men as we must suppose the first preachers of Chris- 
tianity to have been, but must have been calculated to win all men's 
hearts, and have made them the great objects of favour, admiration, 
love, and confidence. It is as impossible but that they must have 
found friends, as it is impossible that Christianity could have been 
oropagated, if they had not done so. We might as well believe in St. 
Augostin's men and women without heads, as imagiue that there were 
ever men, or whole races of men, without the natural affections and 
rational faculties that constitute men ; or that, being such, they should 
be insensible of the virtue, goodness, wisdom, and miraculous gifts 

* Of course making the assumption that there were such persons, and that 
»uch were their acts and counsels, argument i gratia. 

34 2l 



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9W THE ARGUMENT OF MARTYRDOM. 

of toe first preachers of the purest and best doctrine that ever was in 
the world, or have suffered such men to undergo any sort of wrong or 
oppression whatever. It outrages probability ; it is unnatural ; it if 
impossible ; it is inconceivable ; it is the sheer end of all discourse of 
reason. 

2nd. It is contrary to the general tenor of the New Testament Usilf} 
in that the Gospel of St Luke is addressed to the most excellent The- 
ophilus, a person of rank and distinction sufficient to prove that the 
Gospel at the time of writing it, enjoyed the patronage of the great: 
in that Christ, by express precept, instructs his disciples, that if they 
should be persecuted in one city they should fly to another, (Matt x. 23) ; 
a precept implying, not only that persecution would never be general) 
but authorizing and commanding them not to suffer themselves to be 
persecuted but to get out of the way of it, even by having recourse to a 
He or a shirk, when occasion should call for it : which is necessarily in* 
eluded in every act of absconding or flight 

Jesus Christ, by palpable example, shows that he would rather hare 
seen the whole world perish than he would have been crucified, if he 
could, by any means, fair or foul, have made his escape ; and submitted 
at last to drink the cup only because it was impossible that it should 
pass from him. 

The Apostle Peter asks of the Christians to whom his epistles aie 
addressed, " Who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of tint 
which is good ?"* a sort of challenge which could not have been given 
if the Christians ever had been called to suffer on account of their 
religion merely, or were in any state of liability to suffer on that ac- 
count. 

The Apostle Paul, in the last authentic account of him, is described 
as existing in a state of perfect security and independence in Rome, 
under the government of Nero himself, and is so far from charging even 
that worst of all the Roman emperors with the spirit of religious intol- 
erance, that he speaks of hkn as the minister of God, not a terror to 
good works, but to the evil ;f a sort of language and doctrine that 
leaves us no alternative, but that either the whole of ecclesiastical history 
is a tissue of falsehood, or the New Testament is no better. 

3d. It is contrary to the evidence of history. — Such abandoned and 
unprincipled wretches as the state justly punished for their Crimea) 
would gladly be thought martyrs rather than felons ; they would accuse 
their judges— as what felons would not— of partiality, and of condemn- 
ing them for being Christians, especially as there were never wanting a 

• 1 Peter iii. 13. f Romans xiii. 3. 



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THE ARGUMENT OF MARTYRLOV . 367 

number of persons sufficiently stupid and wicked to think that Chris- 
tianity itself gave them a right and privilege to commit crimes witk 
impunity (a notion that wants not countenance in the New Testament 
itself*} ; and these persons, when suffering the due reward of their 
deeds, would not fail to claim and receive the credit of being martyrs. 
The offensive conduct of such persons could not have failed to have 
occasioned innumerable mistakes, in which the innocent may have suf- 
fered with the guilty, and the Pagans may, upon the stimulus of in- 
tense provocation, have taken sometimes severe and excessive revenge 
on the insults put on their religion. A Jefferies, a Bonnor, or Kcity of 
London Recorder^ might occasionally have sat on a Pagan bench, but 
it does not appear that the Roman senate or magistracy, generally, 
ever lent countenance to any public measures of religious persecution. 
The code of Roman laws contains not a vestige of any statute that 
was ever enacted against Christians. Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, the 
Antonines, and Julian, were men of the nicest sense of honour, and of 
so strict and passionate an attachment to the principle of justice, that it 
is rather conceivable that they would have suffered martyrdom them- 
selves than have put it into the power of their worst enemy to attaint 
the purity of their administration. u If a man were called to fix the 
period in the history of the world during which the condition of the 
human race was most happy and prosperous, he would without hesita- 
tion name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the acces- 
sion of Commodus."$ 

That period embraces eighty-four years, from the 96th of the Chris* 
tiau era to the 180th, during which reigned Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, 
Antoninus Pius, and Antonius the Philosopher. Nor can any age or 
any country in the world boast of a succession of reigning princes of 
equal virtue, wisdom, and humanity. The best of our most religious 
and gracious kings that ever swayed the sceptre over a Christian 
people, was never worthy to be compared with any one of these suc- 
cessively excellent sovereigns. " The edicts of Adrian and Antoninus 
Pius expressly declared, that the voice of the multitude should never be 
admitted as legal evidence to convict or to punish the unfortunate per- 
sons who had embraced the enthusiasm of the Christians.'^ 

What extraordinary motive, what new and never-before-heard-of 

• "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin." (1 John i. 7.)— "If 
% ur unrighteousness commendeth the righteousness of God." (Rom. iii. 5.) 

t The little barbarian, in calling for judgment on the author, pleaded for the 
expediency of violent and corporeal punishment, on Feb. 7, 1828, 

I Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, vol. 1, p. 126 

§ Ibid. vol. 2, p. 422. 



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3tt THE ARGUMENT OP MARTTRDOM. 

spring of human action can have been brought into play, to set men 
all at once persecuting the very best of religions, who had never 
persecuted any other that ever was in the world ; and to induce those 
unquestionably wise and good men, whose justice and generosity had 
never been impeached till then, just then to lay aside their justice and 
generosity, to be wise and good men no longer, but to be converted into 
persecutors, and to become enemies to the death of the meek and inno- 
cent followers of an offenceless faith ? Surely here is problem without 
solution, effect without cause, and improbability without evidence. To 
believe that the first preachers of Christianity, or their immediate sue 
cessors, were the victims of persecution, we must shut out the evidence 
of all other histories but such as they themselves put into our hands, 
and determine to believe not only without evidence, but in direct con- 
tradiction to it. Nor even will such a degree of obstinacy make sure 
work for our persuasion that the Christians generally testified their 
sincerity by martyrdom, since, 

4th. it is positively denied by the very authorities on whose V« ri- 
mony alone it could be pretended.—" In the time of Tertullian and 
Clemens of Alexandria, the glory of martyrdom, with the universal 
consent of the Christian community, was confined to the singularly dis- 
tinguished personages St. Peter, St Paul, and St. James."f 

St James is said to have -been murdered by St. Paul, and therefore 
his death ought not to be laid to the charge of Pagan persecution. 

The martyrdom of St. Peter and St. Paul is contrary to the indica- 
tions of the New Testament itself, and rests on no better credit than 
that of the apostolic history of Abdias, which the church has rejected 
as apocryphal 

" Dionysins, the friend of Origen, reckons in the immense city of 
Alexandria, and under the rigorous persecution of Decius, only ten 
men, and seven women, who suffered for the profession of the Christian 
name*/' and Origen himself declares, in the most express terms, that 
the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable. 

Specimens of Martyrology. 

The Roman legends tell of ten thousand Christian soldiers who were 
crucified in one day by order of the Emperor Trajan, or Adrian, on 
Mount Ararat ; on the strength of no better authority than which, our 
church of England daily repeats the palpable and egregious falsehood, 
44 The noble army of martyrs praise thee!" The fact itself is of 

• Gibbon, vol. 2. p. 427. 



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THE ARGUMENT OF MARTYRDOM. *» 

such a nature, even in the judgment of sincere Christians, as to be 
pronounced not only not true, but utterly, physically, and morally impos- 
sible to be true. 

And of this character, and no better, are all the stories of martyr* 
dom endured by Polycarp, Ignatius, and others, under the humane 
and just Trajan, and the martyrdoms of Sanctus, Maturus, Pothinus, 
Ponticus, Attains, Blandina, and all the martyrs of Vienna and Lyons, 
who, if we will believe Eusebius, Addison, and I blush to say, Lardner, 
suffered under the administration of Antoninus Verus, were fryed to 
death in red hot iron chairs, and suffered such torments, as to be sure 
it was physically impossible that they should have suffered. 

" The holy martyrs," says die veracious historian, " underwent 
such torments as are above all description. However he makes an 
attempt to describe them, and tells us, that " the tormentors who were 
employed to torment (the young lady) Blandina, tortured her all man* 
ner of ways from morning till evening, relieving each other by turns, 
till they themselves became feeble and feint with exertion, and acknow* 
ledged themselves overcome, there being nothing more that they could 
do to her ; and they wondered that she had any breath left, her whole 
body having been tortured and mangled ; and they declared, that any 
one torture used by them was sufficient to deprive her of life, much 
more so many and so great. But that blessed woman renewed her 
strength, and it was a refreshment and ease to her ; and though her 
who.* body was torn to pieces, yet by pronouncing the words, ' I am a 
Christian, neither have we committed any evil/ she was immediately 
re-created and refreshed, and felt no pain. So after the executioners 
had given up the business of attempting to kill her, which they were by 
no means able to accomplish, she was hung up in chains, dangling 
within the reach of wild beasts. And this, no doubt, was so done by 
the ordinance of God, that she, hanging in the form of a cross, might, 
by her incessant prayers, procure cheerfulness of mind to the suffering 
saints. After she had hung thus a long while, and the wild beasts had 
not ventured to touch her, she was taken down and cast into prison, to 
be reserved for further torments; where she still continued preaching 
and encouraging her fellow Christians, rejoicing and triumphing in all 
that she had gone through, as if she had only been invited to a wedding 
dinner : whereupon they broiled her whole body in a frying pan ; which 
she not at all regarding, they took her out and wrapt her in a net, and 
cast Jier into a mad bull, who foamed and tossed her upon his horns to 
and fro, yet had she no feeling of pain in all these things, her mind 
being wholly engaged in conference with Christ. So that at length, 
when no more could be done unto her, she was beheaded, the Pagans 



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90 THB ARGUMENT OF MARTYRDOM, 

themselves confessing, that never any woman was heard of among 
them to have suffered so many and so great torments."* 

As for Sanctus, deacon of Vienna, when there was nothing more that 
they could do to him, " they clapped red hot plates of brass upon the 
most tender parts of his body, which fryed, seared, and scorched him all 
over, yet remained he immoveable and undaunted, being cooled, 
refreshed, and strengthened with heavenly dews of the water of life 
gashing from the womb of Christ ;f his body being all over wound and 
scar, contracted and drawn together, having lost the external shape of a 
man. In whom Christ suffering, performed great wonders : for when 
those wicked men began again to torture him, supposing that if they 
should make use of the same torture, while his body was swollen, and 
his wounds inflamed, they should master him, or that he would die, not 
only no such thing happened, but, beyond all men's expectation, by 
those latter torments his body got relief from all the disease it had 
contracted by what he had before suffered ; he recovered the use of his 
limbs, which he had lost ; he got rid of his pains ; so that, through the 
grace of Christ, the second torture that they put him to, proved to be a 
remedy and a cure to him, instead of a punishment"^ 

Such is a fair specimen of ecclesiastical history, and such the trash 
which must be held to be credible, if the argument of martyrdom be so. 

Against such evidence, which may well be considered as setting 
comment at defiance, we every now and then stumble on admissions of 
the Christian fathers themselves that entirely exonerate the Pagan 
magistracy, not only from such charges as might be inferred from any 
supposable ground or outline of original truth in such narrations as 
these, but which clear them from all suspicion of ever having coun- 
tenanced persecution on the score of religion, in any case whatever. 
Tertullian challenges the Roman Senate to name him one of their 
emperors, on whose reign they themselves had not set a stigma, who 
had ever persecuted the Christians; and the modest and rational 
Melito, bishop of Sardis, in applying for redress (which was instantly 

* Quoted from Eusebius by Lardner, vol. 4, p. 83, and revised from the 
original by the author. Notwithstanding the gravity of Lardner and Addison on 
this subject, I mightily suspect that this Lady Blandina was nothing else than 
a Shrove-Tuesday pancake; — a sort of Sir John Barleycorn. She would not be 
the first divine sufferer who had been made of a bit of dough. — Compare with 
pp. 54, and 224, of this Diegesib. 

f Tht womb of Christ : so Dr. Hanmer renders it. It is not the only passage 
which serves to render the sex of Christ equivocal. 

X Lardner's translation, as far as it is followed, vol. 4, p. 87 ; the rest ori* 
ginal from Euseb. Eccl. Hist. lib. 5, c. 1. 



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THE A ROOM EN I OF MARTYRDOM. 971 

granted) to Marcus Antoninus from some grievances which religious 
people at that time had cause to complain o£ expressly states, that a 
similar cause of complaint had n.ever before existed. 

Even if the evidence of the reality of martyrdom incurred for the 
conscientious maintenance of the Christian faith in former times, were 
a thousand-fold more than it is (which it could easily be) or more than 
is pretended (which it could not easily be) it surely could not avail 
against the evidence of our own absolute experience, that the merit of 
this argument in our times, stands altogether and exclusively on the 
side of infidelity, None are the persecutors but Christians themselves. 
None are the victims of persecution, or liable to be so, but the con- 
scientious and honourable opponents of Christianity. It is the denyers 
and impugners of revelation, who alone give evidence of sincere con- 
viction, in the voluntary abdication of station and affluence, and in the 
endurance of the most cruel and trying sufferings. It is our own times 
that have witnessed the virtue that has preferred the cell of solitary 
confinement, and the fate of felons and culprits with an approving 
conscience, to the professorial chair, the rector's mansion, or the pre* 
bendal stall, that might have been held as the wages of iniquity. 

They are Christians, and of Christians the loudest and most ostenta- 
tious professors of Christianity, who alone discover the dispositions and 
tempers of persecutors, and are, of all persecutors, the most implacable, 
most cruel, most inexorable. — While those who are most conspicuous 
in their professions of deprecating persecution, and who " lament that 
ever the arm of the law should be called in to vindicate their cause," 
deprecate and lament it avowedly on no other ground than that of 
their fear that it should render its victims objects of a pity and sym- 
pathy of which themselves are incapable. — In their own right charitable 
phrase, they fear lest persecution should "go near to place the martyr 3 * 
crown on the loathsome hydra of infidelity;" that is, they are not sorry 
for the sufferer, but they are sorry that any body else should be sorry 
4br him. They would not spare the poor victim a single pang, nor take 
a knot out of the lash that is laid on him, nor whisper a comfortable 
syllable in his ear, nor reach a cup of water to his lip, nor wipe away a 
tear from his cheek, nor soothe his fainting spirit with a sigh ; — but 
they are sorry for the disturbance of the welkin — they begrudge him the 
pity and compassion due to his sorrows. If some way could be in- 
vented to do the business without a noise, it seems, for all their charity, 
it might be very well done. 

One might fill libraries with works of Christian divines in protest 
against the principle of persecution— one act of any Christian divine 
whatever, in accordance with the sincerity of such a protest, would be 



edby Vj( 



m TUB APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 

one more than the world ha* ever heaad o£ Never did the son tee a 
Christian hand drawn oat of the bosom to prevent persecution, to resist 
its violence, to say to it what does I thou f or to redress the wrong that 
it had done.— Of what, then are such protests evidence — but of the 
foulest, the grossest hypocrisy /-—hypocrisy, than which imagination 
can conceive no greater. — 2 James xv. 16. 

The demonstrations of Euclid, therefore, are not more mathematically 
complete than the ratiocinative certainty that the whole argument of 
martyrdom, upon which the most popular treatises on the evidences of 
the Christian religion are founded, is as false as God is true. 



CHAPTER XL. 



THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 



The Apostolic Fathers, is the honourable distinction given to those 
orthodox professors of the Christian religion, who are believed to have 
lived and written at some time within the first hundred years, so as to 
stand within a conceivable probability of having seen or conversed with 
some ogother of the twelve apostles, and to have received their doctrine 
thus immediately from the fountain heads. 

There are upwards of seventy claimants of this honour, exclusive of 
such as the pseudo Linus and Abdias, bishop of Babylon, who pretends 
to have seen Christ himself, though no such person, no such bishop, and 
no such bishopric ever existed. The majority of these are mere ima- 
ginary names of imaginary persons, whose various actions and sufferings 
are altogether the creation of romance. The historians of the first 
three centuries of Christianity have taken so great a licence in this way, 
as that no one alleged fact standing on their testimony can be said to 
have even a probable degree of evidence. The most candid and learned 
even of Christian inquirers have admitted, that antiquity is most 
deficient just exactly where it is most important ; that there is abso- 
lutely nothing known of the church history in those times on which a 
rational man could place any reliance ; and that the epocha when Chris- 
tian truth first dawned upon the world, is appropriately designated as 
the Age of Fable.* 

* Rerura gestarum fides exmde graviter laberavent nee orbis terrarum tantam 
sedet Dei ecclesia de temporibus suis mysticis merito queratur.-~.Dr. Felly 
Bishop of Oxford. 



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THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS VZ 

The title of Apostolic Fathers is given only to the five individuals, 
St, Barnabas, St Clement, St. Hennas, St. Ignatius and St. Polyearp, 
of whom the three former have honourable mention in the New Testa- 
ment ; the two latter are believed to have suffered martyrdom, and each 
is supposed to be the author of the respective epistles which have come 
down to us under their names which, notwithstanding, the church ha* 
seen reason to take for no better than they are supernumerary forge- 
ries. Bad they, however, been retained in the canon of sacred Scrip- 
ture, we should have had folios of evidence in demonstration of their 
authenticity ; and withal the demonstration (which all religionists appeal 
to whenever they can) of penalties, fines, imprisonment, and infinite 
persecution, on all who had understanding and integrity to treat them 
with the contempt which every thing of the kind merits. 



ST. barnabas — Bishop of Milan, 

Was a Levite of the country of Cyprus, and one of those Christians 
who, having land, sold it, and brought the money, and laid it at the 
apostles' feet ; whereupon they changed his name from Jo9es into Bar- 
nabas, which signifies the son of consolation. So that he literally 
bought his apostleship ; and having gratified the avarice of the holy 
conclave, their historian bears him the honourable testimony, that he 
was a good man y full of the Holy Ghost and of faith, (Acts xi, 24.) 
St. Clement of Alexandria has often quoted the epistle that goes under 
his name as the composition of an inspired apostle. In the oatalogue 
of Dorptheus it is said, " Barnabas was a minister of the word together 
with Paul ; he preached Christ first at Rome, and was afterwards made 
bishop of Milan :" and in the translator's preface to that catalogue, it is 
asserted, on I know not what authority, that Barnabas had a rope tied 
about his neck, and was therewith pulled to the stake and burned. We 
have no account of any miracles which Barnabas wrought in his life- 
time which seems rather hard dealing with him on the part of the 
apostolic firm, since he had paid a very handsome consideration to be 
admitted into full partnership. The amende honourable was made to 
his relics in after ages ; they became wonderfully efficacious in healing 
all manner of diseases. His dead body had the distinguished honour of 
giving a certificate to the genuineness of the gospel of St. Matthew, 
which was found lying upon his breast, written in his own hand, when 
his body was dug up in the island of Cyprus, so late as the year of our 
36 2 m 



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974 THB APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 

Lord and Saviour Jeans Christ, 489;* so rapidly waa the Christian 
faith, and consequently the efficacy of the relics of the saints, extending. 

Any one who reads the Epistle of Barnabas with but a small degree 
of attention/' says Dr. Lardner," will perceive in it many Pauline 
phrases and reasonings. To give the character of the author of it, in 
one word, he resembles St Paul, as his feUow labourer, without copy- 
ing him." 

Paley quotes only the single passage from the apocryphal epistle, 
which, he says, is probably genuine, ascribed to the apostle Barnabas, 
containing the words, * Finally teaching the people of Israel, and 
doing many wonders and signs among them; he (Christ) preached to 
them, and showed the exceeding great love which he bare towards 
them/'f 

To so clear and distinct a testimony to Christ and his miracles, 1 
subjoin an equal sublime specimen of this apostle's inspired reasoning, 
from Archbishop Wake's translation : — 

" Understand therefore, my children, these things more fully, that 
Abraham, who was the first that brought in circumcision, looking 
forward in the spirit to Jesus crucified, received the mystery of three 
letters ; for the Scripture says that Abraham circumcised three hun- 
dred and eighteen men of his house. But what, therefore, was the 
mystery that was made known unto him ? Mark, first,the eighteen, and 
next the three hundred : for the numeral letters of ten and eight are 
I H, and these denote Jesus , and because the cross was that whereby 
we were to find grace, therefore he adds three hundred, the note of 
which is T ; wherefore by two letters he signifies Jesus, and by the 
third, his cross. 

" He who has put the engrafted gilt of his doctrine within us, knows 
that I never taught to any one a more certain truth than this; but 1 
trust that ye are worthy of it.$ 

" Consider how God hath joined both the cross and the water together ; 
for thus he saith, blessed are they who put their trust in the cross, and 
descend into the water. § 

* Jesus Christ is the heifer; the wicked men who were to offer it, 
were those sinners who brought him to death. 

" But why were there three young men appointed to sprinkle ? Why, 

* Sigebertum Geraebfeceiisero ad a.c. 489, itemque alios legas sab Zenonis 
knperio in insula Cypro repertum S. Barnabse corpus, et super pectore ejus 
Evangelium S. MaUhaen&oypa$o» rov Xu0H0*+-~Fakricii f torn. 1, p. 341. 

f Paley's Evid. vol. 1, p. 119. 

t Ibid. p. 180. 

§ Barnabas's Catholic Epist. in Wake, p. 176. 



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THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 8*5 

to denote Abraham, Isaac* and Jacob, And why wi the wool put upon 
a stick? Why, but because the kingdom of Jesus Christ was founded 
upon wood.* Blessed be our Lord, who hat given us this wisdom, 
and a heart to understand Ms 8eerets."t 



saint cuacnra, A* D. 96. 
Bishop of Rome. 

St. Cmmenti with great confidence considered to be the individual 
honourably mentioned by St Paul in those words, " help those women 
which laboured with me in the Gospel, with Clement also, and with 
other my fellow labourers whose names are in the book oflife."$ 

He is ordinarily called Clemens Romanus, as having been bishop of 
Rome, in the first century, to distinguish him from the no less illus- 
trious Clemens Alexandrinus, who was bishop of Alexandria, about a 
hundred years after. In the Chronography generally attached to Eva- 
grius's Ecclesiastical History, his name is arranged as third in succes- 
sion of the bishops of Rome from St. Peter, the order standing thus : 
St. Peter, St Linus, St Annicetus, or Auenoletus, St. Clement.§ 
There is but one ancient manuscript of his writings in existence :|| his 
first epistle only is held to be genuine. Measureless are the forgeries 
which Christian piety and conscientiousness had for ages put upon the 
world under his name. 

It is not without shrewd reason that the epistle which Paley quotes 
has been rejected from the place which it for many ages held in the 
volume of the New Testament itself. 

The passage, however, generally adduced from this epistle to prove 
the martyrdom of St. Peter and St Paul, is too brief, and too evidently 
itself taken from some other authority, to admit of the fact being 
received on the evidence of this one single sentence, in one solitary 



• Barnabas'* Catholic Epist. in Wake, p. 174. t Ibid 9 p. 169. 

t Phil. iv. 3. 

% " He had been first bishop of Sardis, and was afterwards translated to the 
more lucrative see of Rome."— Dorotheas . So early was the office of a bishop 
a good thing! 

|| Laidoer, vol. 1, p. 290. 



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*6 THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 

manuscript of an author upon whom so many Christian forgeries have 
been committed. 

Clement evidently refers to some existing and generally received 
accounts of the martyrdom of St Peter and St. Paul, of which accounts 
his Phillippian converts must have been in possession ere they could 
be thus loosely and generally called on to " take them as examples." 

Of the martyrdom of St Paul, not the least account is traceable in 
the New Testament ; but the very reverse of the probability of such a 
consummation of his history is indicated in the last allusion to him 
which the sacred text contains: " And Paul dwelt two whole years in 
his own hired house, and received all that came in unto him, preaching 
the kingdom of God, and teaching those things which concern the Lord 
Jesus with all confidence, no man forbidding him." — Acts xxviiL 
81. 

This, in Rome — this, under the reign of the tyrant Nero — this, 
when the tyrant Nero was not only reigning, but residing in Rome, 
unquestionably looks much askew on the probability of those horrible 
stories of peaceably and quietly conducted Christians being put to 
such horrible torments, as the interest of those who would harrow up 
our feelings with those stories, requires us to believe. 

Of the martyrdom of St. Peter, in like manner, the only authentic 
record in the case deposeth not a syllable. The last mention of his 
name in the canonical Acts of the Apostles informs us, that after hav- 
ing successfully set the power of the magistrates at defiance, burst oat 
of chains that "fell off from his hands" and passed through an iron 
gate, (C which opened to him of his own accord, he went down from Judea 
to Coesarea, and there abode"* This is the scriptural account of the 
matter ; and though no story in the Arabian Nights Entertainments 
could possibly be more absurd, yet nothing in ecclesiastical history 
could be more authentic. 

On what authority, then, can St. Clement be supposed to remind the 
Philippians, that " Peter, by unjust envy, underwent not one or two, 
but many sufferings, till at last, being martyred, he went to the place 
of glory that was due unto him ;" and that " Paul, in like manner, at 
last suffered martyrdom by the command of the governors, and departed 
out of the world, and went unto his holy place, being become a most 
eminent pattern of patience unto all ages ?'. Surely the modernism of 
this manner of description must strike almost the dullest apprehension. 
Here are neither place, nor time, nor circumstance specified, as we 

• Acts xii. 



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THB APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 977 

should look for them in an historical statement " And by the command 
of the governors," forsooth! Oh, yes; any governors yon please: 
Bonaparte, or the Great Mogul, I suppose. It is outrageous ro* 
mance. 

The merit of the invention, however, belongs to other hands. It will 
be found, on a critical investigation, that the source from whence Clement 
drew, and from which is derived also the common belief that the 
apostles suffered martyrdom, is the Famous and Renowned Apostolic 
History of Abdias, the first bishop of Babylon, who {\f we will believe,) 
had been ordained immediately by the apostles themselves, and who 
with his own eyes had seen the Lord. 

These ten books of Abdias, though rejected entirely by the shrewder 
prudence of modern Christianity, contain the continuance of that 
broken and irregular jumble of the real journal of some Egyptian 
missionaries with the fabulous adventures of imaginary apostles, which 
the church retains, under the name of the Acts of the Apostles. 

Nothing can be more sophistical than the whole plan of reasoning, 
and system of exhibition observed throughout the laborious volumes of 
Lardner. His method is to sift the works of these Fathers for any 
expression of similar character or cast of thought to such as are found 
in the New Testament, upon which similarity he would draw the infer- 
ence that they must have read the New Testament and have held it in 
the light of a divine revelation ; while he passes over the egregious 
anachronisms, the gross blunders, and the monstrous absurdities, which 
show those writings to be such as anyone who sincerely wished to serve 
the Christian cause would wish had never existed. As they appear in 
Lardner's management, the reader is deceived into an apprehension 
that they were at least respectable, 

St. Paul's 1st Epistle to the Corinthians is the only Book of the New 
Testament quoted by Clement. As a parallel to 1 Cor. xv. 20, " But 
now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first fruits of them 
that slept," Dr. Lardner quotes from the 24th chapter of the first 
of Clement, the words, " Let us consider, beloved, how the Lord £oes 
continually show us that there shall be a resurrection, of which he has 
made the Lord Jesus Christ the first fruits, having raised him from the 
dead ;" where, in the same chapter of Clement, follows an argument 
from seeds, resembling St. Paul's, 1 Cor. xv.36, 37, 38 ; but where 
Dr. Lardner wholly omits to let us know that Clement's main 
argument for the resurrection is not taken from the celebrated 
15th chapter of St. PauPs Epistle to the Romans, but from the no 
less celebrated and far more entertaining 15th book of Ovid's Meta- 



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*8 THR APOSTOLIC FATBBBS. 

morphoses,* where is the whole story of the phoenix regenerating 
itself from its own ashes, and returning every five hundred years, 
to die and revive again in the flames upon the idolatrous altars of the 
temple of the sun : — an argument which it is utterly impossible that 
St Clement could have used, had the gospels then in existence been 
considered as of higher credibility than the stories of Ovid, or had he 
himself believed that the resurrection of Christ was more probable 
than the fable of the phoenix. 



SAINT HEBMAS, A. D. 100. 

Bishop of PhilipoHs. 

Who is saluted by St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, and 
whose work entitled The Pastor, or Shepherd, was, in the time of 
Eusebius, publicly read in the churches, t and in the judgment of Origen 
was held to be divinely intpired,% deserves all the respect due to an 
author who confesses himself to be a wilful asserter of known false- 
hood. Lardner, who makes large extracts from his writings, to prove 
thereby the credibility of the gospel history, has the disingenuineness 
to conceal, and pass over entirely unnoticed, this characteristic feature 
of an authority that serves him well enough, at the time, to support his 
gospel credibility, leaving the character of the holy Father out of all 
weight in the consideration of his testimony. 

I cannot send this apostolic father and his divinely inspired book to 
their eternal rest, in the judgment of my readers, with greater fairness, 
than by presenting them with a chapter as a specimen. The annexed 
is the whole of the fourth chapter of the second book, from Archbishop 
Wake's translation :— 

" 1. Moreover, the angel said unto me, Love the truth, and let aO 
the speech be true which proceeds out of thy mouth, that the spirit 
which the Lord hath given to dwell in thy flesh, may be found true to* 
wards all men, and the Lord be glorified, who hath given such a spirit 
unto thee ; 

" 2. Because God is true in all his words, and in him there is no 
lie; 

* H«c tamen ex aliis ductrat primordia rebus ; 

Una est que reparet seque ipsa reseminet, ales : 

Assyrii Phonics vocant Ovid. Metamorph. lib. 15, line 391 

f Lardner, vol. I, p. 305. J Ibid. p. 551. 



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THB APOSTOLIC FATHBH3. m 

u 3. Tbey* therefore, that lie, deny the Lord, and become robbers of 
the Lord, not rendering to God what they received from him : 

" 4. For they received the spirit free from lying ; i$ therefore, they 
make that a liar, they defile what was committed to them by the Lord, 
and become deceivers. 

" & When I heard this* I wept bitterly ; and when the angel saw 
me weeping he said unto me, Why weepest thou ? 

" 6. And I said, Because, sir, I doubt whether I can be saved. 

" 7. He asked me, wherefore ? 

" 8. I replied, Because, sir, I never spake a true word in my life, but 
always lived in dissimulation* and affirmed a lie for truth to ail men, 
and no man contradicted me, but all gave credit to my word ; 

" 9. How then can. I live* seeing I have done in this manner ? 

" 10. And the angel said unto me, Thou thinkest well and truly ; 

" 1L For thou ougbtest, as the servant of God, to have walked in 
the truth, and not have joined an evil conscience with the spirit of 
truth, nor have grieved the holy and true Spirit of God. 

" 12. And I replied unto him, Sir, I never before hearkened so 
diligently unto these things. 

" 13. He answered me, JVow thou nearest them, take care from 
henceforth, that even those things which thou hast formerly spoken 
falsely for the sake of thy business may by thy present truth receive 
credit ; 

" 14. For even those things may be credited, if, for the time to 
come thou abalt speak the truth ; and by so doing that mayest attain 
onto life* 

" IS. And whosoever shall hearken unto this command and do it, 
and shall depart from all lying, he shall live unto God.' 1 

St. Hennas was evidently a Gnostic, or one of the knowing' ones, 
" His principle,* says Beausobre, " was, that faith was only fit for the 
rabblement, but that a wise man should conduct himself by his know- 
ledge only/'* He seems to have escaped martyrdom. 



8T. FOLYCARF, A D. 108. 

Bishop of Smyrna, 

" It is a thing confessed and lamented by the gravest divines of the 

* Hermes. . . .Gnostique. Son principe est que la foi ne convient qu au 
peuple ; que ' le sage se conduit par fa science.— Beam, torn 2, p. 731. 



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§80 TAB APOSTOLIC FATHERS. 

Boman # Catholic communion, that the names and worship of many 
pretended saints, who never had a real existence, had been fraudulently 
imposed upon the church."* I commend not my suspicions that this 
Polycarp may be one of the unreal order, but leave the reader to give 
all the respect he can afford to the testimony that would subdue our 
reason to a belief that a venerable inoffensive old man who, after having 
lived in undisturbed tranquillity in his bishopric under a Nero and 
Domitian, should have been dragged, in the 86th year of his age, to 
the cruel death of fire under the government of the philosophic Anto- 
ninus, and by the magistracy, to be sure, of that old rascal again; 
Herod,! I dare say the same who slew the children in Bethlehem : for 
chronology has nothing to do with matters of faith. " Then came 
there a voice from heaven," so runs tne sacred story, " saying, Be of 
good cheer, Polycarp, and play the man." % 

" The proconsul demanded of him, whether he were that Polycarp, 
beckoning that he should deny it, and adding, ' Consider thine age- 
swear by the fortune of Caesar; repent thee of what is past; say, 
Remove the wicked* 1 But Polycarp exclaimed, ' O Lord, remove these 
wicked ;' and, after concluding a mystical prayer with the usual dox- 
ology at the end of a modern sermon, he was committed to the flames ; 
but the flaming fire framing itself after the form of a vault, or sail of a 
ship, refused to burn so good a man : upon which a tormentor was 
ordered to be fetched, to whom they gave charge to lance him in the 
side with a spear, which, when he had done, such a stream of blood 
issued out of his body that the fire was therewith quenched.^ So that 
the whole multitude marvelled such a pre-eminence to be granted and 
difference to be showed between the infidel and the faithful and elect 
people of God, of which number this Polycarpus was one, a right 
apostolic and prophetical doctor of our time, bishop of the catholic 
church of Smyrna.|j But that the Devil procured that his body should 
not be found, for many endeavoured and fully purposed to hold com- 
munion with his blessed flesh.' But certain men suggested to Nicetas, 



* Dr. Middleton's Preface to his Letter from Rome* p. 59. 
t Keu vvnrr* aura o UfwasxP* Hp«J**.. — -Ecc/. Hist. lib. 4, p. 97. 
J Ia-yui IloXi/xotpiri kou ntipitw. — -Buses, lib. 4, c, 14, p. 96, E. 
§ Who would have thought that the old man had had so much blood in him? 
—Macbeth, 
l| OJt arrignXot xou $*e%»9Qf xot arowipoj *m*tt/A«oj— An to piyiSof ovtoo 

TUff fA*pTVp**S — ITIT1|}lV01F «* ftS TO 0-tt/m»T»O> *UT0V V$' »I/*W **09lH| *«MTl| 

voXXw iViSviAmtvTw toi/to row**, xcu wmvwo-cu avrov tw oy*« ffum wtfiaXKta 
yowr t»k w*»»t»ik Toy tow HPftAOY w*Tip* a&fXQot h <}oXxitf — •>« Ti /*« ****** 
«, r. X.— JEme6. Ecel. Hut. lib. 4, c. 14, p. 99, lit. A. 



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Tat apostouo PATHEaa »i 

the father of Herod, and hU brother Dalces, to move the proconsul not 

to give up his body, lest the Christians, as they said, should leave 
the crucified, and begin to worship Polycarp." It is added, that he 
suffered with twelve others who came out of Philadelphia. 

There has been a great deal of the well-known Unitarian tact of 
reducing to probability, practised upon our records of the martyr- 
dom of Polycarp* 

The original story y unquestionably ran, that upon the piercing of the 
martyr's breast, a dove was seen to fly out of his body. — See the text of 
Cotelerius, in his Apostolic Fathers ; and the remarks of Dr. Middle* 
ton, in his Free Inquiry. The important fact is exscinded from its 
place in Eusebins, for a sufficiently surmiseable purpose. It served its 
turn, while it would serve its turn : but it has become necessary that 
the evidences of the Christian religion should make some sort of peace 
with reason, and the most entertaining passages of sacred history are con- 
sequently to be sacrificed. Some divines are even for expunging the 
improbable parts of the New Testament itself. Alas, what would they 
reduce it to ! j 

In the teeth of such self-evident proof of a fictions character, and a 
fictious martyrdom, Dr. Lardner coolly tells us, that the relation of 
the martyrdom of Polycarp, written by the church of Smyrna, of which 
he was bishop, is an excellent piece, which may be read with pleasure 
by the English reader, in Archbishop Wake's Collection of the Lives 
of the Apostolic Fathers. 

The name of Polycarp, his bishopric, his martyrdom, are entirely 
unknown to rational or credible history. 



ST. IGNATIUS, A. D. 107, 

Is believed to have been bishop of Antioch in Syria, in the latter 
part of the first and beginning of the second century,* and is believed 
to have succeeded Euodius, who had been the first bishop of that see. 
The name Euodius occurs in the list of persons saluted by St. Paul, 
and this seems to be the reason of Eusebius for making a bishop of 
him, though nothing is known of him but the name. "Beside the 
bishopric," says Lardner, " the martyrdom of this good man, Ignatius, 
is another of those few things concerning him which are not contra- 
dicted/' Basnage, however, puts the year of Ignatius's death among 

• Lardner, vol 1, p. &13. 
36 2n 



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m rms apostohx fatobss* 

the -obscurities of chronology. Indeed, those learned men who have 
attempted to fix the time, have no other grounds than the testimony of 
Maalla, a barbarian of the sixth century, and the Acta or Martyrdom 
of Ignatius, the genuineness of which Lardner himself admit* may be 
toell disputed. He concludes, however, that u as the epiatl&s we nov 
have of Ignatius are allowed to be genuine by a great number <rf 
learned men whose opinion I think to be founded upon probable argu- 
ments, I now proceed to quote them as his/'* 

The name of Ignatius is only twice mentioned by Origen, and that 
in so cursory a manner as . to. preclude any inference that Qrigen 
himself had any certain knowledge of his history. The whole story of 
his martyrdom is so utterly incongruous with time awl circumstance} 
as to lead to no other rational conclusion than the, probability that he is 
altogether the figment of that pious romance in wftioJi ecclesiastical 
historians have ever delighted— another name to be added to the long 
Kst of saints and martyrs, which even the more iutoUjgent of Roman 
Catholic writers have been constrained to. admit never existed at all, 
but were the baseless fabric of a vision, Jesus Christ himself being the 
chief corner-stone. The epistles ascribed toJgnattas are admitted by all 
parties to have been most extensively altered from the first or earlier 
drafts of them ; but such as they are, even on a momentary reverie 
of their supposeable genuineness, they afford no testimony to any one 
of the essential facts of the Christian story* Written whenever, or hy 
whomsoever we suppose them to be, 'tis certain that the writer held out 
nothing so little as the notion that the events on which the Gospel is 
founded, had ever really happened. Let his mode, of reaaooiogi tell Us 
own story i This it is. 

" Ignatius, which is called Tboopho rus,f to the church which is at 
Ephesus in Asia, most deservedly happy, being blessed through the 
greatness and fullness of God the .Father, and predestinated before the 
world began, that it should be, always unto an enduring and unchange- 
able glory, being united and chosen through his true passion, according 
to the will of the, Father, and Jesus Christ our God ; all happiness by 
Jesus Christ and his undetiled grace. 

" There is one physician, both fleshly and spiritual, made and not 
made — God incarnate, true Hfe in death, both of Mary and of God- 
first passible, and then impassible, even Jesus Christ. 

• lardner, voU 1, p, 316. 

f Theophorus, i. e. one who carries God within him — a name of the same 
stock as Praise- God Barebone, — another edition of Polycarp's intercostal 
pigeon. 



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TUB APOSTOLIC FATHBIA m 

" My soul be for years ; and I myself the eipiatory offering for your 
church of Ephesos> so famous throughout the world*" &e; 

191* fikapier^" Now the virginity of Mary, and he who was born 
of her, was kept in secret from the prince of this world, as was also 
the death of our Lords three of the mysteries the most spoken of 
throtighotit the world* yet done in secret by God* How then was our 
Saviour manifested to the world ? A star shone in heaven beyond all 
the other stars, and its light was inexpressible, and its novelty struck 
terror into men's minds ; all the rest of the stars, together with the sun 
and moon, were the chorus to this star; but this star dent out its light 
exceedingly above them aU» and men began to be troubled to think 
whence this new star came, so unlike to ail the others. Hence all the 
power of magic became dissolved, and every bond of wickedness was 
destroyed* men's ignorance was taken away, and the old kingdom 
abolished? @od himself appeared in the form of a roan, for the renewal 
of eternal Ufa From thence began what God had prepared, from 
thenceforth things were disturbed, forasmuch as he designed to abolish 
death."* 

Thug far from Arehbishop Wake's English translation. Among the 
pass&ges which Lardner extracts are* from his Epistle to the Phila* 
delphians, the following:-'-* 

" Behold, I have heard of some who say, " Unless I find it in the 
ancients, I will not believe in the Gospel ; and I said unto them, It is 
written : they answered me, It is not mentioned. But to me, instead 
of all ancients, is Jesus Christ ; and the uninterpolated antiquities are 
his cross, and his death and resurrection, add the faith which is by 

him."! 

Archbishop Wake's Collection, In English, and Mr. Hone's Apocry- 
phal New Testament, supply the reader with so many of the epistles 
of Ignatius as it suited the purpose of Dr, Lardner to recognise. We 
have, however, a billet-doux of this holy father written to the Virgin 
Mary, and her answer, to it,. of equal authenticity to any other writings 
of the first century, and even in some respects of superior evidence. 

* H iraf$m& ixotpicn; xow o roxtrrrc, eunyq, ownux; %m o Scn&roq rov xupou rptc* 
j*i/<rri»p*a xpavy*?, otrtva to wv%wt Q&o tTrp<*x§n *•»$ w» f^a»if *>$* t«* outo&w ? 
Aarrty & ot/p*»w» iKct^ii twrtp va,rr*f rovf vtorttfutt *** to $<*!{ avrov xttxXxXnrof 
uv, xeu f fVto-jLtoir Tapw^gy n KoUttrtns aVtW fa Js Aw** twt* owroa mpa, ijX*« x«t 
<Tt\nrn x,°f°S tyw«To TW ccartfii — x. t. X 

t Exov<ru wm Xvyotrut oti ton /t*n « rot; *J>£*i*k ivpw, *y to waeyytTnv ao 
mortvia xou XFyorros pop q&vtok, ori yeypairrew, ttrtxpi^n<fdtf puto or* tw VfOKnrm 
tfXXH h dpxwb fo-nv 1 ncrov* X^i^toj t» aSixra *f %uto o <rtavp+; avrov. — %. r. X* 
IIwtii)6> bears a fhture sense. < . . 



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fM THB APOSTOLIC FATHERS; 

The learned and ingenious Peter Stallobdus, who had for some time, 
through the craft and subtlety of Satan, been tempted to doubt the 
genuineness of this correspondence, subsequently avows his repentance 
of that dangerous scepticism, and declares that the arguments of that 
serious writer, Flavius Dexter, had so convinced his mind, that he 
dared no longer hold their claims as questionable.* They are as 
follows :— 

The Epistle of the blessed Ignatius, to the holy Virgin Mary, Mother 
of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

" To the Christ-bearing Maria, her own Ignatius 
sendeth his compliments. 

u You ought to comfort and console me, who am a new convert and 
a disciple of our friend John ; for I have learned things wonderful to 
be told concerning your Jesus, and am astonished at the hearing ; but I 
desire from my very soul to be certified immediately by yourself who 
wast always familiar and conjoined with him, and privy to his secrets, 
concerning the things I have heard. I have written to you other 
epistles also, and have asked concerning the same things. — Farewell j 
and let the new converts who are with me be comforted by thee, and 
from thee, and tn thee. Amen. 

The blessed Virgin* s Answer. 

" To Ignatius, the beloved fellow disciple, the humble handmaid 
of Christ Jesus sendeth her compliments.^ 

" The things which you have heard and learned from John concerning 
Jesus are true 5 believe them, cleave to them -—hold fast the vow you 

* This divine was one of the thousands who reason that there can be no danger 
in believing too much, belief being at any rate the safe side ; for if the moon after 
all should prove to be made of a green cheese, what will become of philo- 
sophers! 

f Christifere Maria, snus Ignatius ! Me neophy turn Johannisque tui disci- 
pulum, confortare et«consolari debueras. De Jesu enim tuo percepi mira dictu, 
et stupefactus sum ex auditu. A te autem qua semper ei fuisti famiiiaris et 
conjuncta, et secretorum ejusconscia, desidero exjmimo fieri certior de audius. 
Scripsi tibi etiam alias, et rogavi de eisdem. Valeas; et neophy ti qui mecum 
sunt ex te et per te, et in te coqfortentur. Amen. 

{ Ignatio delecto condiscipulo humilis ancilla Christi Jesu. De Jesu qua) a 
Johanna; audistiet didicisti, vera sunt. Ilia credas ; illis inhssreas et Christiaoi 



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rue apostolic fathers, m 

have made to the Christianity which you have embraced, and conform 
your life and manners to that vow; and I and John will come together 
to visk you. Stand firm in the faith ; act manfully, nor let the sharp 
severity of persecution move you- But may your soul fare well, and 
rejoiee in God your Saviour. Amen." 

To be sure these precious epistles were not forthcoming before the 
faith of the church was ripe to receive them ; being first published at 
Paris, in the year 1495, but they are none the less genuine on that 
account ; nor is there a single argument that can be urged against 
them but what, in parity of application, would be fatal to the credibility 
of either of our four Gospels. Nothing hinders but that these jewels 
might have lain hid under the miraculous keeping of divine providence, 
till the proper time was arrived for their being brought to light and set 
to shine in the bright diadem of Christian evidences. And as for all 
arguments drawn from chronology, geography, and other profane 
sciences, Christians have ever found their best policy to consist in 
regarding those who adduce them as objects of contempt, in committing 
their writings unread to the flames, and themselves unheard to gaols 
and dungeons. It may, however, be a profitable exercise for the inge- 
nuity of believers to try if they can imagine or invent a single senti- 
ment of hostility, expression of scorn, or action of cruelty, that could 
be justly merited by the rejecters of the writings contained in the New 
Testament, that would not, but a few years back, have seemed with 
equal justice to be merited by the impugners of the epistles of Igna- 
tius. 



RESULT. 



Here ends the utmost extent of testimony to the facts of the Chris- 
tian history to be derived from the apostolic Fathers— that is, from all 
who can be pretended to have written or lived at any time within a 
hundred years of the birth of Christ It is not possible to produce so 
much as one single sentence or manner of expression from any one, 
friend or enemy, historian or divine, maintainer or impugner of the 
Christian doctrines, within the first century ; the like of which we can 
conceive to have been used by any person who had been witness of 

tatis suscepts votum firmiter teneas, et mores et vitsm voto conformes. Veniam 
autem cum Johanne, te et qui tecum sunt visere. Sta in fide, et viriliter age, 
nee te commoveat persecuuonis austeritas sed valeat et exsuitet apiritus tuus in 
Deo Salutari tuo. Amen* Fabrkii, Cod. Apoc. torn. 2, p. 841. 



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m TflR APOSTOLIC FATHERS* 

the facts on whioh the doctrines are founded, or contemporary of those 
who had been witnesses, or who had believed that those facts had 
really happened, or had so nrach as heard that there were any persons 
on earth that had seriously asserted that they had happened. The 
language of these Fathers, who are accounted orthodox, to say nothing 
of what we may hereafter gather from heretical information, is every 
where the language of a religious fatuity, childish beyond all names of 
childishness — foolish as folly itself. We should just as well find evi- 
dence and authentication to Magna Charta in the scribblingsof an idiot 
on a wall, or make out the particulars of the Punic wars from the 
records of a baby-house, as discover a trace of testimony iefact in any 
documents of the Fathers of the first century. It remains only for 
those who, after an elapse of eighteen centuries, have moulded or new- 
fangled to themselves a system which they would now have us consider 
as " worthy of all acceptation," to show how that which had so little 
evidence at first, could come to have more afterwards ; or how what 
was never known not spoken of but as a matter of imagination, conceit, 
and faith in the first century, should come to have a right to be put oo 
the score of historical evidence at any later period. 

The orthodox Fathers (as far as doctrine is concerned with ortho- 
doxy) seem only to be distinguished from the heretics, in that they 
occasionally use a strength of language in their descriptions of alle- 
gorical figments, which might seem to approximate to the style of 
history, and might make what they only intended as emblems, pass for 
actual circumstances. Yet against such an acceptation of such occa- 
sional over-drivings of the allegory, we have to consider that we are in 
possession, not only of the argument arising from the natural impro- 
bability of such allegorical exaggerations when mistaken for foots, and 
the total absence of all corroborative and coincident testimony which 
could by no possibility be" conceived to have been wanting if such foots 
had ever happened \ biit we have the concurrent, and it may be called 
unanimous consent of the whole body of Christian dissenters (that is* in 
the church term, the heretics), who from the very first, and all along, 
never ceased to maintain and teach, that no such a person as Jesus 
Christ ever existed and that all the evangelical statements of his 
miracles, actions, sufferings, births, death, and resurrection, were to be 
understood in a high and mystical sense, and not, according to the 
letter as facts that had ever happened ; and this, too, confirmed by 
admissions of those who are called orthodox themselves, in many 
positive passages; unabated by so much as a single sentence that can 
be produced from any one writer within the first hancjred years, whioh 
is such as he would have written,, or would have suited his character to 



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TUB APOSTOLIC FATH&BS. 



writer bad to believed that the Gospel had been founded upon historical 
fact. And absolutely the only difference between Paganism and 
Chri6^anity— Christians themselves being judges — was the difference 
between the allegorical fictions in which the one or the other couched 
the same theorems; as is demonstrated, without need of further com- 
ment, by the juxta-positioa. of their respective texts: 



JuMut Firmkiu$ 9 
in description of the 

Pagan Mysteries, 
quotes Pagan Priests. 
* But in those funerals and 
lamentations which are annually 
celebrated in honour of Osiris, 
their defenders wish to pretend a 
physical reason ; they call the seeds 
of fruit, Osiris, the earth, {sis, the 
natural heat, Typhon; and be- 
cause the fruits are ripened by the 
natural heat, are collected for the 
life of man, and are separated from 
their matrimony to the earth, and 
are sown again when winter ap- 
proaches, this they would have to 
be the death of Osiris ; but when 
the fruits, by the genial fostering 
of the earth, begin again to be 
generated by a new procreation, 
this is the finding of Osiris. 



Beamobre, 

in description of the 

Christian Mysteries, 

quotes Christian Fathers* 

*.In one word, the suffering 
Jesus is nothing else than what the 
Manichssans called the members 
of God ; that is to say, the celes- 
tial substance, or the souls which 
have descended from heaven. 

The earth is the Virgin ; the 
heavenly substance which is in the 
earth, is the substance of the 
Virgin, of which Jesus Christ was 
formed; the Holy Ghost is the 
natural heat, by whose virtue the 
earth conceived him ; and he be* 
comes an infant in being made to 
pass through the plants, and from 
thence again into heaven. 



• Seel in his funeribus et luct&bus* 
defenaores eorum volunt addere phy» 
siciara ratiooem. Frugum semina 
Osirim dicentes esse, Isim terram, Ty- 
phonem calorem. Et quia maturate? 
fruges calore, ad vitam hominis colli- 
guDtur, et a terra eoasortio separan- 
tur, et rursus appropinquante hyeme 
seminantur : hanc volunt esse mortem 
Osiridis, cum fruges redjduntur : inven- 
tionem vero, cum fruges genitali terra 
fbmento concepts, nova rursus, csepe- 
rint procrealione geaerarj.-rDte Errors 
Profatutmm JUligionum, p. 6. 



* En an mot, le Juu Passible, West 
autre chose que les Manich^ens appel* 
loientles membresde Dieu, cVstadire 
la substance celeste, ou les araes qui 
sont deseendues du ciel. — Beausobre 
Histoire det Dogmes de Manichee, liv.' 
9, o. 4, torn. 2, p» 556\ 

La terre est la Vierge : la substance 
celeste, qui, est daps, la terre, est la 
substance VIrginale qui compose Jesus ; 
S. Esprit est 1'agent, par la yirtue du 
quel la terre le conpoit, est Penfaate 
en le faisanj passer dans les plantes, et 
dela dans le ciel.. 



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98S TATHERS OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 

With more than the significancy that will strike one at the first sight, 
has the learned Montfaucon observed, that " when once a man begins 
to use his own judgment in matters of religion, it is no wonder that he 
should frequently be in error, since all things are uncertain, when ones 
we depart from what the church has decreed:"* — that is, in other 
words, there is no other real argument for the truth of the Chris- 
tian religion, than "He that believeth not shall be damned J"— 
Markxvi. 16. 



CHAPTER XLL 

THE FATHERS OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 



PAPIAS, AJD. 116. 

Bishop of Hierapolis. 

The first of all the Fathers of the second century, and next imme- 
diately following on those of the first to whom exclusively is applied 
the distinction apostolical, isPAPiAS, placed by Cave at the year 110; 
according to others, he flourished about the year 115 or 116. He fe 
said by some to have been a martyr. Irenseus speaks of him as & 
hearer of St. John, and a companion of Polycarp. Papias,f however, 
in his preface to his five books, entitled An explication of the Oracles 
of the Lord, does not himself assert that he heard or saw any of (he 
holy apostles, but only that he had received the things concerning the 
faith from those who were well acquainted with them. " Now we are 
to observe," says Eusebius, " how Papias, who lived at the same time, 
mentions a wonderful relation he had received from Philip's daughters. 
For he relates, that in his time a dead man was raised to life. He also 
relates another miracle of Justus, surnamed Barsabas, that he drank 
deadly poison, and by the grace of the Lord, suffered no harm*" This 
deadly poison was certainly not arsenic. 

Dr. Lardner concludes his very brief account of this Father, with a 

• Cum quia eb devenit ut fidei dogmata ex sui judicii arbitrio definiat, nihil 
minim est i i frequenter aberret : omnia quippe sunt incerta, cum semel ab eccle- 
siae statutis discessum est. — Montfaucon in prolegom. ad Euseb. Comment m 
Psalmos, 

t I claim to be excused from giring the Greek text in all cases in which the 
translation is not my own. This is Dr. Lardner's. 



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FATHERS OF THE SECOND CENTURY. £89 

remark which, from any pen bat his, would bear the character of drollery. 
Immediately after telling us that " Rapias was a man of small ca- 
pacity/' he adds, " But I esteem the testimony he has given to the 
Gospels of St. JViatthew and St. Mark, and to the First Epistle of 
St. Peter and St John, very valuable; but if Papias had been a wiser 
man, he had left us a confirmation of many more books of the New 
Testament."* 

It was convenient, however, for Dr. Lardner, and indeed essential to 
the policy of his whole work, entirely to suppress the important evi- 
dence by which his readers might be furnished with the means of esti- 
mating the value of this testimony for themselves. It is perhaps a 
very different impression of the character of this primitive bishop, and 
of the value of his testimony, jrhich the reader would be led to form, 
upon consideration of the evidence arising from his writings themselves 
as preserved to us on the authority of his admirer and disciple Iren&us, 
in which he gravely assures us, that he had immediately learned from 
the evangelist St. John himself, that " the Lord taught and said, that 
the days shall come in which vines shall spring up, each having ten 
thousand branches, and in each branch shall be ten thousand arms, and 
on each arm of a branch ten thousand tendrils, and on each tendril ten 
thousand bunches, and on each bunch ten thousand grapes, and each 
grape, on being pressed, shall yield five and twenty gallons of wine ; 
and when any one of the saints shall take hold of one of these bunches, 
another shall cry out, * I am a better bunch, take me, and bless the 
Lord by me.' "f The same infinitely silly metaphors of multiplication 
by ten thousand, are continued with respect to grains of wheat, apples, 
fruit, ^flowers, and animals beyond all endurance, precisely after the 
fashion of that famous sorites of the nursery upon the H&use that Jack 
built) the malt, the rat, the cat, the dog, the cow, &c. : all which Jesus 
concluded by saying, " And these things are believable by all believers ; 
but Judas the traitor not believing, asked him, But how shall things 
that snail propagate thus be brought to an end by the Lord ? And 
the Lord answered him and said, Those who shall live hi those times 



* Lardner, under the head Papias. 

f Docebat Dominus et dicebat venient dies in quibus nascentur vines, singular 
dena millia palmitum habentes, et in uno palmite denia millia brachiorum, et in 
uno brachio palmitis dena millia flagellorum, et in unoquoque flagello, dena milHs 
botruum, et in unoquoque botfo, dena millia acinorum, et unumquodque acinum 
expressum dabit viginti quinque metretas vini. Et cum eorum apprehenderit 
aliquis sanctorum botrum, alius clamabit. Botrus ego melior sum, me sume, 
per me Dominum benedic. — Hac Irenai textus tranthtio Alberti Tahrkii jut. 
37 o 



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990 FATHERS OP THE SECOND CENTURY. 

f hall see."* But even this Christian conceit wants the merit of origin* 
ality. It is a poor plagiarism from the form of adulation in which the 
sovereigns of India were wont to be addressed, which was as follows: 

" May the king live for a thousand years, and the queen for a thou* 
sand years lie in his bed ; and may each of those years consist of a 
thousand months, and each of those months of a thousand days, and each 
of those days of a thousand hours, and each of those hours be a thousand 
years. M + 

Papias, however, notwithstanding his intimacy with the Evangelist 
St. John, and the value of his testimony to the Gospels of Matthew and 
Mark, fell into the slight error of believing that no such an event at 
the crucifixion ever happened, but that Jesus Christ lived to be a very 
old man, and died in peace in the bosom of his own family. Papias, 
with all his absurdities, had some respect for poetical justice, would 
have wound us up the scene decently, and give us gospel quite as true, 
though not so bloody. 



QUADRATUS, A. D. 119. 

Bishop of Athens* 

The testimony on which the advocates of Christianity lay the greatest 
stress, is that of Quadbatus. For earliness of time and apparent 
distinctiveness of attestation, they have no other, equal, or second to it 

He is the only writer, up to the period of the time of his existence, 
who has spoken of the miracles of our Saviour, in a sort of language 
which might make it seem that he believed them himself and took them 
to be historical events. He was endued, says the Chronography$ with 
(he gift of prophecy, and wrote an Apology to the emperor Adrian. 
He is not, however, placed by Lardner in his proper place as an Apos- 
tolic Father, or as next to an Apostolic Father, for reasons, which it is 
impossible for the earnest inquirer after truth not to suspect. He is of 
the same age with Ignatius, and has left us, says Paley, the following 
noble testimony.§ 

* Et adjecit (scil. Jesus) dicens, H«c autem credibilia sunt credentibus. Et 
Juda, inquit proditore, non credente, et imerragante : Quoraodo ergo tales 
t;euitura a Domino perficientur? Dixisse Dominum : Videbunt qui venienl in 
ilia. 

+ Vir. clar. Thomas Hyde de Schachiludio et Nerdfludio. — Citante Fabricio 
ad locum. 

X Which I have frequently quoted. It is that by Melmoth Hanmer, to his 
edition of Eusebius, Evagrius, and Socrates, ▲. d. 1649. 

§ Paley's Evidences of Christianity, vol. i. p. 122. 



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FATHERS OF THE SECOND CENTURY. 391 

The testimony of Quadrates. 

" The works of oar Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were 
real ; both those that were healed, and those who were raised from the 
dead, who were seen, not only when they were healed or raised, but for 
a long time afterwards ; not only whilst he dwelled upon this earth, 
but also after his departure ; and for a good while after it, insomuch 
that some of them have reached our times. 9 '* 

Paley adds not another word on this important testimony. It is only 
by referring to the authority which he affects to quote (which is evi- 
dently so much more pains than he ever took himself) that we learn 
that this famous Quadratus, was, even to Eusebius himself, a mere hear- 
say evidence, — "Among those who were then famous," he telb 
us, " was Quadratus, whom they say 9 \ together with the daugh- 
ters of Philip, was indued with the gift of prophecying ; and many 
others also at the same time flourished, who obtaining the first step of 
apostolical succession, and preaching and sowing the celestial seed of 
the kingdom of heaven, throughout the world, filled the barns of God 
with increase."! — " His book," says Eusebius, " is as yet extant among 
the Christian brethren, and a copy thereof remaineth with us, wherein 
appear perspicuous notes of the understanding and true apostolic doc- 
trine of this man, That he was one of the ancients,§ may be gathered 
from his own words." Then follows the famous passage which we have 
given. 

Quadratus, according to such an account of the matter as we may 
gather from the Ecclesiastical History (or rather ecclesiastical romance, 
for such it is) of Eusebius, was fourth bishop of Athens, reckoning St. 
Paul the first, Dionysius the Aredpagite the second, and Publius, his 
immediate predecessor, who as well as himself is said to have suffered 
martyrdom, the third. 

From a letter of Dionysius bishop of Corinth to the Athenians, it is 
indicated that the Athenians had not only embraced the faith previous 
to the martyrdom of the predecessor of Quadratus, but that " they were 

* The whole passage from beginning to end is— -KoXpotTos, x. t. X. urropu 
<ravr* ihaif $«ya*c— - "t« h awnipof *>/*<•* r* tpy* an vapm, aXu&j yap »jy. O* 
Stpcuetv&tmst o* aucmarrts ix yixpw, o* ovk w$$wray pom Sfpafl-cvopcvot xcu 
cunorafAtm, aXka not* au auporri ff» Ovh tTr^n^nvTos povov ra trwrnpos, ccXKa xai 
araXkaytrros, wra» it* xpoww ixflwoi «rrc xot mj rws u/xinpouj xpovov* rmj 
cun**n «^*xwto" — Towutoj ftty ovrof, x. * X. 

t Aoyo; i^m— " as the story got*," •* the tale hat it," — Euseb. Eccles. Hist., 
Kb.iii. c.31. E. linea 3, Ed. 1612. J Ibid, lib. iii. c.3. linea 11. 

§ Kaff tauroy «px«iortrrcs* 



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m FATHERS OP THE SECOND CENTURY. 



now in a manner fallen from it, and wet* by the zealous labours of 

Quadrates reclaimed/'* 

But what if it should turn out that this Quadratus was no Christian 
at all ! That he was a Pagan priest, who officiated in the temple of 
God the Saviour JEsculapius, then established at Athens, and that this 
pretended testimony to the Jew-Jesus, is nothing more than a broken 
paragraph out of some account that a heathen bishop had given of the 
miracles that were wrought by the son of Coronis. Let the reader 
return to our article Msculapius and propose to his own conviction, 
and solve as he may the important queries thence emergent : 

1st. If such an apology as this purports to be, had been written to 
the emperor Adrian, and Eusebius had possessed or seen a copy of It, 
why he should not have given us the whole of it, or at least enough to 
have given it distinctiveness of application and sense, so as to put 
beyond all doubt those three grand primaries of every written document 
— who it was that wrote — to whom it was that it was written— and 
what was the subject of the writing ? 

Of these inquiries, the broken sentence which 'Eusebius has given us, 
affords no solution. It might have been written by any body else as 
well as Quadratus — to any body else as well as to Adrian ; and of and 
concerning MscuUxpius, as well, yea better and more probably, than 
concerning any other figment whatever. 

No mind that hath the faculty of critical comparison, can shut from 
their influence on its conclusion these eighteen predications of the case : 

1. That Eusebius was a Christian-evidence manufacturer, and was 
labouring and digging in any way, or on any ground to find or to make 
a testimony to primitive Christianity. 

2. That he lived and wrote in the age of pious frauds, when it was 
considered as the most meritorious exploit to turn the arms and de- 
fences of Paganism against itself, to pervert documents from their 
known sense, and to support the cause of Christianity, not only by 
forging writings, but by supposing persons who never existed. 

3. That Eusebius himself indirectly confesses that he has acted on 
this principle, " that he has related whatever might redound to the 
glory, and that he has suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of 
religion." t And that if we substract falsifications, interpolations and 
evident improbabilities, his account of the Christians during the first 

* Euseb. Eccl. Hist. lib. iv. c. 22. * 

f My Greek text of Eusebius, which is 216 years old, is deficient here, and 
obliges me to rely on the quotation as given by Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. 
ii. c. 16, p. 190. Hear also that man after God's own heart, St. Chrysostom; 
" Great is the force of deceit! provided it be not excited by a treacherous inten- 
tion."— Com. on 1 Corinth, ix. 19. 



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FATOBRS OP THR 8E0OND CBNTUHY. S» 

century, amount* to little mora than we lead in tint ondateable com- 
pilatiod, the New Testament/' 

4. That we bare no indication whatever, either in the New Testa- 
ment, or in any credible history, that Christianity had been so success- 
fully preached at Athens, as to gain an establishment ; or that that city 
had become the see of a Christian bishop, at any time within the three 
first centuries. 

5. That where Paul himself; with all his gift of tongues, and power 
of working miracles, was only regarded a a babbler and derided as a 
poor insane vagabond, it outrages the faculty of conceit ttsel£ to con* 
eeive, that he could have appointed and left the regular succession of 
an ecclesiastical hierarchy. 

6. That we have the most unquestionable and unquestioned evidence, 
that ifisculapius was worshipped all along in Athens, under the express 
title and designation of Oub SUtiopk. 

7. That the miracles subsequently ascribed to Jesus Christ, had been 
previously ascribed to, and believed to have been wrought by JEscuhh 
plus. 

8. That these miracles, as ascribed to JEscnlapius, answer in every 
particular to those referred to in this passage of Quadratus. 

9. That, as ascribed to iEsculapius, these miracles of healing, and 
raising men from the dead (I pray observe, not raising the dead, but 
raising them from sicknesses of which they otherwise would have died, 
and so preventing their being numbered with the dead) were charac* 
Uristic of this deity, and come within measure of probability,— not of 
their having happened,-— but of their having been believed to have 
happened. 

10. That that character of openness, publicity and notoriety, which 
Quadratus here challenges as peculiarly characteristic of the works of 
Our Saviour JZscuiapius, was as peculiarly wanting and deficient, nay, 
and even renounced and given up> as the very reverse of the character 
of the miracles ascribed to Our Saviour Jesus Christ. 

11. That tablets were hung up in the temple of JSsculapius, and all 
its walls and pillars covered over and emblazoned with trophies of his 
victories over disease and death. 

12. That persons who had been healed and raised from the dead 
(that is, recovered from diseases of which they had liked to have died), 
were every day in attendance in his temple, certifying the reality of the 
miracles which they sincerely believed had been wrought upon them, 
and pouring forth- in fervours of ecstatic devotion their grateful acknow- 

* My learned friend's unpublished Ed. of Plutarch, in Appendice Prime 11. 



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9M FATHBR8 OP THE SECOND CENTURY. 

lodgements to the god who had heard their prayers and magnified his 
power in their miraculous recoveries : — but 

13. That the works of Jesus Christ were expressly said to have been 
done in secret, and concealed as much as possible from human observ- 
ance. His own resurrection is admitted by writers on the Christian 
evidence, to have been only a private miracle.* A character of leger- 
demain, and collusion attaches to his most wonderful performances, 
even on the showing of the New*Testament itself, When he was 
transfigured* he takes with him only his three favourites. — When he 
turns water into wine, he chooses the time when the witnesses were so 
drunk as not to know the difference.— When he raises Jairus's daughter, 

he puts away all her friends from witnessing the reanimating process. 

When he cures the blind man, he takes him aside from public observ- 
ance.— When he cleanses the leper, " he ttraitly charged him, See 
thou say nothing to any man, but show thyself to the priest ;"J aid 
expressly avows his aim and intention to have been to bilk and deceive 
the people. § 

14. These were the works, and the characteristics of the works of 
the Christian Saviour, in diametrical opposition to which, the bishop 
of iEsculapius would, with singular propriety, say, " But the works of 
our Saviour were always conspicuous, for they were real," &c. as it 
follows, and as it might have followed, or gone before — The works of 
their Saviour were secret and clandestine, because they were not real, 
nor have Christians so much as one public trophy to show, or one indi- 
vidual in the whole world whom they can bring forward to attest any 
sort of benefit or advantage received from their Saviour to the mind, 
body, or estate, of any man, except in the way of supplying a new pre- 
text for levying contributions on the folly, weakness, and ignorance of 
mankind. And 

15. That whereas not more than a twentieth part of the Roman 
empire had embraced the Christian religion, previous to the conversion 
of that (as Eusebius calls him) most holy emperor Constantine : the 
worship of the God iEsculapius continued in the heart of the empire 
under an unbroken succession of Pagan .bishops, with scarcely dimin- 
ished splendour for several hundred years after the pretended diffusion 
of the New Light 

16. That notwithstanding Constantino's destruction of the Phoenician 
temples, that at Athens still remained. 

• See Ignatius'* Testiraoty— Belshara's Evidences, 

f Metamorphoted is the real original word 

t Mark i. 44. § Mark, iv. 12. 



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FATHERS OP THE SECOND CENTURY. M 

17. We have better evidence, than any that hath yet been pretended 
for Christianity, of the belief of a miraculous cure wrought by this 
deity, as late as the year a. p. 485, which is thirty-five years on this 
side of the middle of the fifth century. 

18. Nor, whatever Protestants may choose to think and say of the 
palpable Paganism of Popery, ought they to be suffered to blink the 
historical fact that the religion of Constantino was of the very grossest 
type and form of all that was ever popish.* So that they who choose 
to deny that Christianity and Popery are one and the same religion, 
must make their best bargain of the consequence that follows on their 
denial-— even that Christianity kept floundering about, and found no 
settlement in the world for whose benefit it was intended, till it was 
taken up and established by our English Constantino, Henry the 
Eighth. 



The Christian Apologists, or those who are said to have ad' 
dressed apologies to the Roman Emperors, or Senate, in vindication 
of Christianity and of Christians, were in order of time — 

1. Quadratus, Bishop of Athens . . • a. d. 1 19 

2. Aristides, an Athenian Philosopher , . .121 

3. Justin Martyr . . . . .140 

4. Melito. ....... . 141 

5. Athenagoras , . 178 

6. Tertullian , .200 

7. Minucius Felix . . . . . .210 

8. Arnobius ...... .306 

The difference of time between these Christian advocates, precludes 
us from taking any view of their writings distinctively from their occur- 
rence in the regular succession o& Christan Fathers. Of the two first 
no remains are extant 



* See hia desire to bare Mass and prayers for his soul after death, cap. 71. 
And " how he commanded that his picture should not be set in idolatrous tenir 
pies," that honour being reserved for Christian churches— 16. " How he com- 
manded that the heathenish military legions should pray on the Lord's 
day."— 12. And his piety and faith in the Sign of the Cross — 2. And how the 
Scythians were subjected and overcome by the sign of the Cross.— Ch. 5,. B. 4. 



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49* FATHERS OF, THE SECOND OfiNTURYi 

ABISTTIDE8, A.D. 121. 

An Athenian Philosopher and Christian Apologist, for whom Ease- 
bius informs as, that " he was a faithful man, zealous of our religion, 
and, like Quadratus, wrote an, Apology for it to Adrian, which," he 
adds, " is still preserved among many."* We have, however, not a 
word of this; nor should we, perhaps, have found such a name as that 
of Aristides among the faithful if the heathens had not had their 
Aristides the Just, whose name was wanted for the martyrology. 



HBGESIPPTO, A. D* 130. 

Is placed by Dr. Lardher forty-three years later, lived under Adrian 
and wrote on the siege of Jerusalem, comprising the ecclesiastical his- 
tory from the Apostles down to his own time. Though Eusebius repre- 
sents him as having lived in the time of the apostles themselves, or as 
immediately succeeding them, and having written five books o£ Memoirs 
of the Apostles, from the fifth of which he gives us a long extract con- 
cerning the martyrdom of the apostle James, the immediate brother of 
Christ, whom Hegesippus thus describesf— " This man was wholly 
from his mother's womb.; he drank neither wine nor strong drink ; 
neither ate any creature wherein there was life. He was neither shaven 
nor anointed, nor ever used a bath. To him alone was it lawful to enter 
into the holy places. He used no woollen garments, but wore only fine 
linen, and he went alone into the temple. He was found on his knees, 
supplicating for the remission, of the sins of the people ; so that his 
knees were overgrown with a callosity like those of a camel ; from his 
continual kneeling in prayer to God, and supplication for the people ; 
and from the excess of his righteousness he was surnamed The Just, 
and Oblias, which signifies in Greek the bulwark of the people, and 
righteousness.'^ 

I held this passage worthy of preservation, as famishing an addi- 
tional proof that the first of that order of eccentric and fanatical crea- 

• Eccl. His. lib. iv. c. 3, vol. iv. 

t O" Hywnvffof im rut vpuiTnc tw oMroortXw y no/tiroc itmio^-^tw t*» xi/attw 
civtv VTOfxtrtfjutrt MTTopi* to* Tpouw— it. T. X. aliter, o lvoweoss*-7$ccl. Hist., lib. ii. 
p. 66, c. 22.— B. 

J Own xau o-txipa «jc writ* ovit tp\rvx<» tty&y* frfe* tmmt xi$«Xii? owe atiC*. 
EXaioy orx nku^&ro xou f3a\a,Ktiu> ovx i^pncraro— ko>t* t. X. 

(l* flwrw*X»xiiou r« ywowa ccvrou hw xwjuutXov )oe» to »ti xnparrw nrt your 
«. t. X. Hegesippus apud Eusebmm. 



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FATHERS OF THB SECOND CENTURY, 997 

tares whose successors afterwards came to be called Christians, were 
really Egyptian monks, as Eusebius has in positive terms acknowledged 
them to be, the regular descendants and disciples of the philosophy ot 
Pythagoras, 

None of the genuine works of this Hegesippus are extant ; his name, 
however, and the number and subjects of the volumes ascribed to him 
being given, there were data enow for Christian piety to fail to work 
upon : 

" There is a counterfeit volume of five books under bis name, the 
translator whereof they say St. Ambrose was; nay, it is likelier that 
St. Ambrose himself was the author." 

So says the Ecclesiastical Chronography, affixed tothe oldest editions 
of Eusebius. With Dr. Lardner, however, St. Ambrose is an honour- 
able man, — " so are they all— all honourable men 1" 

I can neither embrace nor entirely reject the inference that presents 
itself, from the feet of the title of Hegeesippus's five books — the 3fe- 
main of the Apostle*~-*hetng precisely the same as that under which 
Justin Martyr seems to quote the contents of our New Testament. 



JUSTIN MABTY*, A. D. 140. 

Is so called from- his being believed to have suffered martyrdom, — a dis- 
tinction which entirely harmonizes with the admissions of Dionysius, 
Origen, Tertullian, and Melito, that the number of martyrs was really 
very few, and that consequently martyrdom was no common occurrence 
to the professors of Christianity. He was born at Flavia Neapolis, 
anciently called Sichem, a city of Samaria in Palestine; a circumstance 
which fully accounts for the Jewish turn and character which any 
system of philosophy that had percolated his brain, would necessarily 
imbibe. Dr. Lardner. describes him as being early a lover of truth, 
and informs us that he studied philosophy under several masters, first 
under a Stoic, next under a Peripatetic, then under a Pythagorean, 
and lastly, under a Platonic philosopher, whose principles and senti- 
ments he preferred above all others, until he became acquainted with 
the Christian Religion, which he then embraced as the only safe and 
profitable philosophy.* 

* ^0MTwiJuwnrwn<r7u» <p*Xo*oPiw eur$x\n rt xou ov^t^* I found this alone 
the safe and profitable philosophy, are his words. Surely that word philosophy 
is an infinitely suspicious term for Christianity 1 

38 P 



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2» FATHERS OP THE SECOND CENTURY 

Fabricius supposes that he was born a* d. 89, and suffered martyr* 
dom in the 74th year of his age, which would be a. d. 163. 

The testimony of Justin Martyr to the contents of the New Testa- 
ment, for the sake of which he is adduced by Lardner, is rendered 
nugatory by the facts: 1st, of the existence of apocryphal gospels, 
which contained very much of the same contents, and in the same 
language, as those that have been received into the canon of the New 
Testament ; 2. That Matthew's and Luke's Gospels were mere com- 
pilations from previously existing documents, from which Justin might 
have made his extracts as well, or rather than from the compilations 
of our Evangelists: 3. That he has never mentioned the names of our 
Evangelists, but speaks of his authorities generally as Commentaries, or 
Memoirs of the Apostles : 4. And that he has also quoted passages 
from those Gospels which the Church has rejected, with indications of 
his entertaining as high respect for them as for those it has received. 

The principal works of Justin Martyr are his two Apologies, and his 
Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew, in two parts ; the latter of which is 
generally quoted by such writers as Porteus, Doddridge, and Addison, 
in those contemptible and truly wicked treatises on the Evidences of the 
Christian Religion, which are written for the purposes of being imposed 
on workhouse children, parish apprentices, and candidates for confirm- 
ation, to make them believe in the miraculous propagation of the 
Gospel. 

This is the popular quotation from it : — " There exists not a people^ 
whether Greeks or barbarians, or any other race of men, by whatever 
appellation or manners they may be distinguished, however ignorant of 
arts or agriculture, — whether they dwell under tents, or wander about 
in covered waggons, — among whom prayers are not offered up; in the 
name of a crucified Jesus, to the Father and Creator of all things." 
One's wonder that so early a Christian should have committed himself 
in so monstrous an absurdity, utterly destructive as it is of all the 
stories of martyrdom which give such pathetic effect to the tale of Chris- 
tian evidences, is only subdued by the truly paralyzing impudence of 
those who would, in our own day, still attempt to impose it on Chris- 
tian congregations. 

Justin Martyr's Apology, addressed in the Year 141. 
A Specimen, 

" Unto the Autocrat Titus JSlius Adrianus ; unto Antoninus Pius, 
most noble Caesar and true philosopher; unto Lucius, son of the philo- 
sopher Caesar, and adopted of Pius, favourers of learning; and unto 



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J 



FATHERS OF THB SECOND CBNTURT. SM 

the saired Senate, with all the people of Borne ; on the behalf of those 
persons, who, among all sorts of men, are unjustly hated and reproached : 
I, Justin, the son of Priscus Bacchius of Flavia Neopolis, of Palestine 
in Syria, as one of their number, do, suppliant with earnest prayers, 
present this my petition" — omuri* (omittendis.)—** You hold not the 
scales of Justice even ; for, instigated by headstrong passions, and 
driven on albo by the invisible whips of evil demons, you take great 
care that we shall suffer, though you care not for what.* 

" For verily I must tell you that heretofore those impure spirits 
under various apparitions went into the daughters of men, and defiled 
boys, and dressed up such scenes of horror, that such as entered not 
into the reason of things, but judged by appearance only, stood aghast 
at the spectres; and being shrunk up with fear and amazement, and 
never imagining them to be devils, called them gods, and invoked them 
by such titles as each devil was pleased to nickname himself by.f 

" If then we hold some opinions near of kin to the poets and philo- 
sophers in greatest repute among you, why are we unjustly hated ? 
For, in saying that all things were made in this beautiful order by God, 
what do we seem to say more than Plato ? When we teach a general 
conflagration, what do we teach more than the Stoics ? By opposing 
the worship of the works of men's hands, we concur with Menander the 
comedian; and by declaring the Logos the first-begotten of God, 
our Master Jesus Christ, to be born of a Virgin without any human 
mixture, and to be crucified and dead, and to have risen again, and 
ascended into heaven,, we say no more in this, than what you say of 
those whom you style the Sons of Jove. 

" For you need not be told what a parcel of sons the writers most in 
vogue among you assign to Jove. There's Mercury, Jove's interpreter, 
in imitation of the Logos}, in worship among you. There's JSseu- 
lapius, the physician, smitten by a bolt of thunder, and after that 
ascended into heaven. There's Bacchus torn to pieces, and Hercules 
burnt to get rid of his pains. There's Pollux and Castor, the sons of 
Jove by Leda, and Perseus by Danae. Not to mention others, I would 
fain know why you always deify the departed Emperors, and have a 

* Is this language that could have been addressed to (hose models of justice 
and just government, Adrian and Antoninus ? Would the like of it have been 
endured by any Christian Sovereign ? Has it so much as an appearance of 
plausibility ? 

-f- Reeve's Apologies, p. 10. 

J This Mercury had, however, held his title of the Logos many ages before 
it was challenged for the Christian Mercury*— See chapter 26. 



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9W FATHERS OF THB SECOND CENTURY. 

feilow at hand to make affidavit that he saw Cfesar mount to heaven 
from the funeral pile.* As to the Son of God, called Jesus, should we 
allow him to be nothing more than man, yet the title of the Sen of God 
is very justifiable upon the account of his wisdom, considering you 
have your Mercury in worship under the title of the Wobb and Messen- 
ger of God, 

" As to the objections of our Jesus's being crucified, I say, that 
suffering was common to all the forementioned sons of Jove, but on); 
they suffered another kind of death. As to his being born of a virgin, 
you have your Perseus to balance that. As to his curing the lame, and 
the paralytic, and such as were cripples from their birth, this is little 
more than what you say of your jEsculapius.+ 

" But if the Christian profession must still meet with such bitter 
treatment, remember what I told you before, that the farthest you can 
go is to take away our lives,$ but the loss of this life will certainly be 
no ill bargain to us ; but you, indeed, and all such wicked enemies 
without repentance, shall one day dearly pay for this persecution in fire 
everlasting. § And as far as these things shall appear agreeable to 
truth, so far we would desire you to respect 'em accordingly ; but if 
they seem trifling, despise them as trifles: however, don't proceed 
against the professors of them, who are people of the most inoffensive 
lives, as severely as against your professed enemies. For tell you I 
must, that if you persist in this course of iniquity, you shall not escape 
the vengeance of God in the other world. '|| 



The reader has here a fair specimen of the whole composition, and a 
complete view of the state and character of the most primitive Chris* 
tianity. 

It will be seen from the fickleness of Justin's character, and the in 
finitely suspicious style- of his Apology (which it is impossible to believe 
was ever presented at all), that it is in the highest degree doubtful 
whether he was really a Christian, or any thing more than an Ammo- 
nian philosopher ; that is, one of the sect of Ammonius Saccas, who in 

* In the case of Romulus, one Julius Proculus, a man of exemplary virtues, 
took a solemn oath tuat Romulus himself appeared to him, and ordered him to 
inform the Senate of his being called up to the assembly of the gods, under the 
name of Qutnntit.— Plutarch, and Dionysius Halkar. lib. 2, p. 124. 

f See ^sculapius and Jesus Christ compared, chap. 20. 

X A reluctant admission that no lives had been taken away, 

§ P. 76, ch.40. || P. 90. 



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FATHB88 OF THB SECOND CENTURY- J*| 

the second century maintained, that all religions were equally founded 
in the delirium of crazy brains, and in the craft of shrewd ones ; and 
that there was no such difference between Paganism and Christianity > 
bat that they might very well be incorporated and considered as one 
and the same, equally proper to be solemnly taught,' and had in respect 
by the common people, and laughed at in secret by the wise.* 

The story of his martyrdom has no other plausibility of history than 
a brief notice of a lewd quarrel with a cynical philosoper, Crescens, 
who was provoked to knock him on the head for bringing a charge 
which we have had Christian bishops who would have felt more disposed 
to forgive than to resent t 

The attempt to represent Justin as a martyr, strongly illustrates the 
general character of Christian martyrdom. Those who suffered by the 
most just and impartial administration of the laws, as robbers or mur- 
derers, or who brought on themselves the consequences of the provo- 
cations they had given, so that they made a profession of Christianity, 
never foiled to acquire the posthomous renown of martyrdom. All 
Christian thieves were sure to pass for saints; and even our Henry 
VIII. and Queen Mary have been represented as the victims of perse* 
cation, suffering under the obstinacy of their heretical subjects. 



imrro, a.d. 141. 

Bbhcp ofSardis, 

Melito, supposed by some of the moderns to be the same as the 
Angel of the Church of Sardi* 9 whom Christ is represented in the 
Revelation of St. John, as ordering that Apostle to address in the 
Epistle there dictated, was Bishop of Sardis in Lydia. In the very 
ancient Chronography affixed to the oldest English editions of Euse- 
bius, and which, upon the whole, I find easiest to be conciliated to some 
sort of consistency with circumstances, he is called Meliton, and placed 
next to Justin, at A. d. 141, which is sixty-four years earlier than his 
place in Lardner. He dedicated an apology to Marcus Antoninus in 
behalf of the Christian community, then under suffering, which Euse- 
bius, in his Chronicle, places at the year 170. As Marcus Antoninus 

* The celebrated Origen had, in his early days, been a disciple of the all- 
accommodating Ammonius.— iorrfiter, vol. 1, p. 520. 

t Km*»ik yovv o mtoTfiKTOK rti /tiyota voXu Tcuitpurru* pit h-wixk wripi- 
ptyxf. Crescens himself gave the fittest translation of this passage.— Itaefr. 
EccL Hist. lib. 4, c. 15. B. 



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9tt FATHERS OF THIS SECOND CENTURY. 

began his reign March 7, A. d. 161, this Apology at least cannot be 
dated earlier than that time; and taking it, upon the meet laborious 
investigation, to be one of the most genuine and authentic documents, 
of so high antiquity, that antiquity could ever supply : it may be well 
esteemed to be matter of real and substantial evidence. Making the 
due allowance for the barbarity of the times, and hoping, as we may, 
that it was the cruelty of others, and not his own fanaticism, that made 
him an eunuch, one cannot enough admire the elegant simplicity and 
plain and rational statement of the probable, and therefore convincing, 
facts that rest on the authority of his most unexceptionable statement 
Eusebius has preserved a large fragment of this important document, 
from which Dr. Lardner liberally renders for us the annexed parapraph, 
which he says is remarkable for politeness, as well as upon other 
accounts. 

" Pious men,* says he, " are new persecuted and harassed through- 
out all Asia by new decrees, which was never done before :* and 
impudent sycophants, and such as covet the possessions of others, taking 
occasion from the edicts, rob without fear or shame, and cease not to 
plunder those who have offended in nothing. If these things are done 
by your order, let them be thought to be well done— for it is not 
reasonable to believe that a just emperor should ever decree what is 
unjust— and we shall cheerfully bear the reward of such a death. Bat 
if this resolution and new edict, which is not fit to be enacted against 
barbarians and enemies, proceeds not from you, much more would we 
entreat you not to neglect and give us up to this public rapine." 

But perhaps it was not, in Dr. Lardner's view, conducive to the 
interest of piety and religion, to have continued his quotation into the 
very next paragraph of this document For the importance of the 
truth with which it teems, this single passage outweighs the value of a 
thousand volumes of factitious evidences. Other testimonies only 
serve to thicken the darkness, and to remove the truth we seek, still 
further and further from the reach of pur research ; this leads us 
directly to it, and with so much the happier effect, as it appears to have 
been no part of our guide's design to have done so. . The sincerity and 
devotion of this Father's mind to the Christian cause, renders a testi- 
mony like his such as Christians themselves must respect. The adverse 
bearing of the testimony of a friendly party, like the favourable bearing 
of the admissions of an enemy, is universally considered to constitute 
the most satisfactory sort of historical certainty. I hold the preserva- 
tion of this important passage, and bringing it forth into the prominence 

• To y«p wJi Tumrt ytyoptw. 



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FATHERS OF THE SECOND CENTURY. JIB 

it challenges, worth a place in my text itself, and the more so, as I feel 
assured that there is no writer on the Christian evidences whatever, who 
has hitherto quoted the passage, or who, if he had possessed diligence 
of research enough to have found it* would not have taken pains to bury 
it again. This it is : 

H' yotq xotff r)f*ai; $*Xoco^ta, irpoTipw /uj> a £ccpSapo*{ u x/aoktw. EvanQno'aom 
/uaXurrct ni fffl PeunXua ou<rm ayatQoy* 

" For the philosophy which we profess, truly flourished aforetime 
among the barbarous nations ; but having blossomed again (or been 
transplanted) in the great reign of thy ancestor Augustus, it proved to 
be above all things ominous of good fortune to thy kingdom/' 

The passage continues : " For from thenceforth the Roman empire 
increased in glory, whose inheritor now you are, greatly beloved indeed 
by all your subjects : both you and your son will be continually prayed 
for. Retain, therefore, this religion, which grew as your empire grew ; 
which began with Augustus, which was reverenced by your ancestors 
before all other religions. Only Nero and Domitian, through the per- 
suasion of certain envious and malicious persons, who were disposed to 
bring our doctrine into hatred. But your godly ancestors corrected 
their blind ignorance, and rebuked oftentimes by their epistles the rash 
enterprises of those who were ill-affected towards us. And your own 
father wrote unto the municipal authorities in our behalf, that they 
should make no innovations, nor practise any thing prejudicial to the 
Christians. And of yourself, we are fully persuaded that we shall 
obtain the object of our humble petition, in that your opinion and 
sentence is correspondent unto that of your predecessors, yea, and even 
more gracious and far more religious." 

This document — and it is wholly indisputable — is absolutely fetal to 
all the historical evidences of Christianity, inasmuch as it Remonstrates 
thefacts-i- 

lst. That it is not true that Christians, as such, had ever at any time 
been the objects of any extensive or notorious political persecution. 

2nd. That it is not true that Christianity had any such origin as has 
been generally imagined for it. 

3rd. That it is not true that it made its first appearance at the time 
generally assigned ; for, vperiw nx/*a<n>, it had flourished before that 
time. 

4th. That it is uot true that it originated in Judea, which was a 



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904 FATHERS OP THE SECOND CENfCRY. 

province of the Roman empire; for it was an importation from some 
foreign countries which lay beyond the boundaries of that empire. 

It is enough to arrange in their places the minor names of ApoIU- 
naris, Dionysius of Corinth, Athenagoras, Theophilus of Antioch, 
Mltiades, Serapion, and whoever else there may have been in the space 
of time from Melito, whose testimony is so essential* till we come to 
those distinguished luminaries of the church and pillars of the faith, 
with whom it is absolutely necessary to be acquainted. The rest are 
but as sparks on tinder. 

ST. IBENJEUS, A. D. 192. 

Bithop of Lyons. 

Learned men are not agreed about the time of Irenseus, or of his 
principal work against heresies. He was bishop of Lyons in Gaul. 
One cannot reasonably fix him at so early a date as is sometimes claimed 
for him (as having been the disciple of Polycarp, who was the disciple 
of St. John), on account of the later date of the heresies and corruptions 
of Christianity, against which he has written, and which must of course 
have had time to have spread, and to have become very serious evils, 
before they could have called for the composition of so learned and 
laborious a work, intended to expose and refute them. It would be 
incompatible with that argumentative generosity which I have proposed 
to myself as the principle of this Diegesis, to take up as a proposition 
the earliest date that the learned would grant me for this Father, for the 
sake of pouncing on the fatal corollary that must follow ; i\ e., if so 
early wrote Irenseus , so much earlier still must those heretical forms 
of Christianity have obtained in the world, which Irenseus wrote to refute ; 
they, then, were not derived from Christianity, but Christianity was 
derived from them ; they are not corruptions and depravations from an 
original stock of primitive orthodoxy, but they are themselves the 
primitive type, and orthodoxy is either a corruption or an improve- 
ment, upon them. Like all the rest of the noble army, Irenseus con- 
trived to carry off the crown of martyrdom ; but as, at any rate^ the 
blood-thirsty Pagans suffered him to enjoy his bishopric in peace till he 
was ninety-three years old, he had not much to complain o& in their 
expediting so slow a progress to glory. 

He is honoured by Dr. Lardner, with the epithet, " this excellent 
person; 99 and is called by Photius the divine Irenseus. The best 
account of him which the English reader can expect to find, is in 



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FATHERS OP THE SECOND CENTURY. 90S 

MiddleWs Free Inquiry into the Miraculous Powers, &&, in which 
he is neither spared nor flattered. The best apology for bim is one of the 
oldest in being, and which we have continual occasion to remember in 
reading the works of Christian divines, " Remember that the Holy Ghost 
saith, Omnis homo mendax" We must not wonder, then, that Ire- 
118BU8 should have been in the habit of asserting as true, not only what 
he himself knew to be false, but in the plenitude of that security of not 
being contradicted, and of being able to cloak himself up in the sane* 
tity of affected contempt for all who were more honest and better 
informed (on which all other churchmen as well as he place their 
ultimate reliance) ; that he should put forth as truth what he knew was 
impossible to be so, and what every sensible man in the world must 
have known so too ; that he should audaciously misread inscriptions on 
public monuments, and pretend authorities for the proof of the Christian 
religion, even in the teeth of thousands who both knew and saw that 
there was nothing of the sort in existence. 

Thus he pretended that there was a monument or image between 
two bridges on the river Tyber at Rome, bearing an inscription to 
Simon the Holy God>* which the devil had caused to be erected there 
to the honour of Simon Magnus, whom they were to be persuaded by 
that sort of proof that their ancestors had worshipped ; thence to infer 
a coincidence with the apostolic history. 

Amid innumerable ridiculous stories, he tells ust that John, who 
leaned on the breast of our Saviour, was a priest, a martyr, and a 
doctor of divinity, and wore a petalon (some part of the Popish trum- 
pery), which, on such authority as this, was to claim the sanction of 
apostolic institution. The distinctness and solemnity of his assurance 
that miracles were still in full vogue in the church in his days ; that 
" they still possessed the power of raising the dead, as the Lord and his 
apostles did, through prayer ; and that oftentimes the whole church of 
some certain placet by reason of some urgent cause, with fasting and 
chaste prayer hath brought to pass that the departed spirit of the dead 
hath returned to the corpse, and the man was, by the earnest prayers of 
the saints, restored to life again/' — such a man never expected that 
rational beings would believe him : no good cause would thank him 
for his advocacy. 

However early Irenaeus be placed in that order of Christian Fathers 
(Dodwell supposed that he was born as early as the year 97> and Dr. 
Lardner places him at a.d. 178, and distinguished him as a saint), 

* Euseb. lib. 2> 0. 34. f Ibid. lib. 3, c. 28. 

39 q 



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806 FATHBftS OP THE SECOND CRNTCRT. 

10 early prevailed many of the grossest absurdities and superstitions 
which Protestants are wont to consider as peculiarly characteristic of 
the church of Rome. 



FANTJEZfUS, JU>. 193 

Fastmsjjb has claim on our acquaintance as matter of Clemens 
Alexandrinus and Origen, and head of the university or school of 
Alexandria, in Egypt; though, on the best calculations, it would seem 
that he was living even in the third century. His high authority is 
indicated in the circumstance of Origan's pleading hie example in 
justification of his study of heathen learning. Photius speaks of him as 
a hearer of some who had seen the apostles, and even of some of the 
apostles themselves. 

Eusebius bears this important testimony to his character and place 
in history :* " At that time (sciL about the period of the accession of 
Commodus) there presided in the school of the faithful at. that place 
(scil. Alexandria) a man highly celebrated on account of his learning, 
by name Pantanus. For there had been from ancient time erected 
among them a school of sacred learning, which remains to this day ; 
and we have understood that it has been wont to be furnished with 
men eminent for their eloquence and the study of divine things; and 
it is said that this person excelled others of that time* having been 
brought up in the Stoic philosophy ; that he was nominated or sent 
forth as a missionary to preach the gospel of Christ to the nations of the 
East, and to have travelled into India. For there were yet at that 
time many evangelists of the word, animated with a divine seal of imi- 
tating the apostles, by contributing to the enlargement of the gospel, 
and building up the church ; of whom this Fantaenus was one ; who is 
said to have gone to the Indians, where it is commonly said he found 
the gospel of Matthew, written in the Hebrew tongue, which before his 
arrival had been delivered to some in that country who had the know* 
ledge of Christ, to whom Bartholomew, one of the apostles, is said to 
have preached, and to have left with them that writing of Matthew, and 
that it was preserved among them to that time. This Pantaenus, there- 
fore, for his many excellent performances, was at last made president 
of the school of Alexandria, where he set forth the treasures of the 
divine principles both by word of mouth and by his writings*"* 

* I find this passage ready translated for me by Lardoer, vol. 1, p. 390. 
t Eccles. Hist; lib. 5, c. 9. 



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FATHERS OF THB SECOND CENTURY. 30? 

What St Jerom says of this ancient Christian, is to this purpose : 
'* Pantaenus, a philosopher of the Stoic sect, according to an ancient 
custom of the city of Alexandria, was, at the request of ambassadors 
from India, sent into that country by Demetrius, bishop of Alexandria, 
where he found that Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, had 
preached the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to the gospel 
of Matthew, which he brought back with him to Alexandria, written 
in Hebrew letters."* 

Here have we another clue to the real history of Christianity, wind* 
ing up to the same core of the labyrinth, and bringing us through a 
varied tract to the result which we have already ascertained, under the 
guidance of Melito, Eusebius, and PliHo. Pantaenus, a missionary 
from the Therapeutan college of Alexandria, seems to have brought 
from India the idolatrous legends of the Hindoo god Chrishna, whom 
he imported into the Roman dominions, like a good Eclectic as he was, 
uniting the characters of the Grecian, or Phaeniciaa Yesus, and the 
Indian Chjushna, " in one Lord Jesus Christ," whose history, at first 
contained in the Diegesis, or general narrative, was re-edited by 
three Egyptian secretaries, afterwards yclept the evangelists, Matthew, 
Mirk, and Luke, and subsequently enlarged by an appendix of Egyp- 
tian rhapsodies, under the denomination of the Gospel according to 
St John. The discovery of the unknown terann a quadratic equation, 
never more entirely responded to all the requisites of the problem, than 
these facts do to every rational query that can arise out of the pheno* 
inenaof the gospel legend. 



CLEMBS3 ALEXANDRIXU8, AJ>. 194 t 

Or, as he is entitled by Dr. Lardner, St. Clement of Alexandria, was, 
as Eusebius intimates, originally a heathen, though he succeeded Pan* 
taenus as president of the monkish university of Alexandria, which man- 
kind have to thank for the concoction or getting up the whole gospel 
scheme, as originally imported from India, and modified to the taste of 
the nations which acknowledged the supremacy of Rome. Mr. Dodwell 
was of opinion that all the works of Clement which are remaining were 
written between the years 193 and the end of 195. His works are 
very extensive, his authority very high in the church, and his name and 
place iu history chiefly to be remembered on account of the frequent 
quotation of his Stromata, or fragments, and other pieces* In point 

* St. Jerom, quoted by Lardnsr, vol. 1, p. 391. 



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308 FATHERS OF THE SECOND CENTURY* 

of evidence he affords nothing, except that from the circumstance of 
the four gospels having received the more particular countenance of 
the Alexandrine college, over which he presided, he and ail other 
aspirants to university honours, and the ecclesiastical emoluments that 
would follow them, must be expected to pay all due deference to the 
books his university had chosen to patronize. 



TEBTULLIAW, A.D. 200. 

Quintus Septimus Florens Tertullianus, the last that can be read into 
the second century, and the very first of all the Latin Fathers, was, 
like the rest of them, originally a heathen, was afterwards a. most 
zealous and orthodox .Christian, and finally fell into heresy. He was 
made presbyter of the church of Carthage in Africa, of which he was a 
native, about aj>. 193, and died, as may be conjectured, about the year 
220. As he had become tinctured with heresy, ha lost the honour of 
his place in " the noble army of martyrs," 

The character of his style, as given by Lactantius, may be allowed by 
all.—" It is rugged, unpolished, and very obscure ;" and yet, as Cave 
observes, it is lofty and masculine, and carries a kind of majestic elo- 
quence with it, that gives a pleasant relish to the judicious and inqui- 
sitive reader. " There appears," says Lardner, "in his writings, fre- 
quent tokens of true unaffected humility and modesty— virtues in 
which the primitive Christians were generally so very eminent/ 9 

Of this assertion of Dr. Lardner, and, consequently, of the character 
of assertions likely to be made by the Doctor generally, where the 
honour of Christianity and of Christians was to be maintained, 1 leave 
the reader to judge from the annexed 

Specimen of St. TertulUan's true unaffected humility and modesty, t* 
his discourse against the sin of going to the Theatre. 

" You are fond of spectacles : expect the greatest of all spectacles— 
the last and eternal judgment of the universe ! How shall I admire, 
how laugh, how rejoice, how exult, when I behold so many proud mo- 
narchs and fancied gods groaning in the lowest abyss of darkness; so 
many magistrates, who persecuted the name of the Lord, liquefying is 
fiercer fires than they ever kindled against the Christians; so many 
sage philosophers blushing in red-hot flames, with their deluded scho- 
lars ; so many celebrated poets trembling before the tribunal, not of 
Minos, but of Christ ; so many tragedians, more tuneful in the expres- 



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FATHERS OP TUB SECOND CENTURY. 309 

fiion of their own sufferings ; so many dancers,"* &c— I hope the 
reader may think here is humility and modesty enough 1 

Specimen of Tertullian's manner of reasoning on the evidences of 

Christianity.f 

" I find no other means to prove myself to be impudent with success, 
and happily a fool, than by my contempt of shame ; as, for instance, — 
I maintain that the Son of God died: well, that is wholly credible 
because it is monstrously absurd. — I maintain that after having been 
buried, he rose again : and that I take to be absolutely true, because it 
was manifestly impossible."^ # 

This language, not being protected by privilege of inspiration, is 
allowed to convey its full drift of absurdity to our awakened intelligence* 
It is safest to go to sleep and give god the glory, over the perfectly 
parallel rhapsodies of the inspired chief of sinners. 

Where Tertullian is intelligible, his testimony to the status return 
of Christian ty up to his time, is highly important. And 'tis from his 
Apology, addressed to the Emperor and the Roman Senate in the year 
198, which Dr. Lardner justly calls his master-piece, that we collect a 
testimony corroborative of that of Melito, of Origen himself, and of , 
the highest degree of conjectural probability, in demonstration of the 
utter falsehood and romance of the whole proposition on which Faley 

a * Snpereunt alia spectacula, ille ultimus et perpetuus judicii dies, ille na» 
uonibus insperatus ille derisus, cum tanta secuti vetustas et tot ejus nativitates 
uno igne haurieotur. Quae tunc spectaculi latitudo 1 quid adinirera ! quid ri- 
deam ! ubi gaudeam, ubi exultem, spectans tot et tantos reges, qui in caelum 
Kceptt nunciabantur, in imis tenebris congemiscentes ? item presides perse- 
cutors Dominici norainis ssevioribus quam ipsi flammis ssevierunt liquescentes? 
Q»os sapientes philosophos coram discipulis suis una conflagrantibus erube- 
scentes, etiam Poetas, non Rhadamanti nee ad Minois sed ad inopinati Christi 
tribunal palpitantes, &c.~-Ito citat locum Paganus Obtrectator, p. 150. Sufficat 
lectori jutto pro auctoritatt. — R. T. 

t De Spectaculis, c. 30. 

t So rendered and authenticated by the original text, quoted in my " Syn- 
tagma," p. 106, my first publication from this prison ; a work which those 
whose scandalous impostures and audacious slanders provoked, find it wisest 
to treat with contempt. The Christian war is always Parthian. Its tact is. 
to throw out its calumnies, but never to allow the accused his privilege of de- 
fence. To read the vituperations that Christians heap on infidels, is an exercise 
°f godly piety: to venture but to look on an infidel's vindication, is playing 
with edged tools.— None rail so loud, as they who rail in safety 1 



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$10 FATHERS OF THB SBCONp CRNTURY. 

rests the stress of his Evidences of Christianity. So for is it from troth, 
that Christians were ever the victims of intolerance and persecution on 
the score of their profession of a pure and holy doctrine, that in addition 
to the testimony of the general sense and fairest scope of the greatest 
number of texts of Scripture itself* the truly respectable suffrage of 
Melito, bishop of Sardis, the express declaration of Origen,t that up to 
his time the number of martyrs was very inconsiderable, and above all, 
to the irresistible conviction of all the rational probabilities of the case, 
we now add 

TUB TESTIMONY OF TEETULLIAW,J 

That the wisest of the Roman Emperors have been protectors of the 

Christians. 

" The Christian persecutors have been always men divested of justice, 
piety, and common shame, upon whose government you yourselves 
have put a brand, and rescinded their acts by restoring those whom 
they condemned. But of all the Emperors down to this present reign, 
who understood any thing of religion or humanity, name me one who 
ever persecuted the Christians. On the contrary, we show you the 
excellent M. Aurelius for our protector and patron, who, though he 
could not publicly set aside the penal laws, yet he did as well, he pub- 
licly rendered them ineffectual in another way, by discouraging our 
accusers with the last punishments, viz. burning alive. 

"Does not the prisons sweat with your heathen criminals con- 
tinually?— Do not the mines continually groan with the load of hea- 
thens? — Are not your wild beasts fattened with heathens ?— Now, 
among all these malefactors, there's not a Christian to be found for any 
crime but that of his name only, or if there be, toe disown him for a 
Christian.*^ 

• Timothy, iv. 8. Godliness is profitable, &0.—-1 Peter iii. 13. And who is 
he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good ?— v. 16. That 
they may be ashamed that falsely accuse your good conversation. — Matthew ▼. 
That they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaves. 
* f Quoted ia Gibbon, chap. 15. 

J Reeve's Apologies of, &c. 

§ This is an early specimen of primitive Quakerism, the policy of a sect of 
the most arrogant, most ignorant, fraudulent, intolerant, and inexorable men 
that ever adorned the gospel and disgraced humanity. In every thing the dia- 
metrical reverse o£ their professions. It may seem hard to say that there never 
was an honest man among them : but there never was a hard saying so like i 
true one. 



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FATHERS OP THE THIRD CENTURY. 911 

Such language we have seen Tertullian use, and such a spirit of 
annoyance and actual assault upon the rights and liberties of their 
Pagan fellow citizens, must occasionally have provoked the passions of 
any men who had no supernatural graces to subdue and coerce the 
sentiments of nature. The spitting in a magistrate's face-— the inter* 
ruption of Pagan worship, the total expulsion of their own children and 
brethren from all membership, relation, or succession of inheritance, in 
the families of which they were a part, upon their not conforming to 
the faith ;* and all such sort of conduct as persons who desired martyr- 
dom and delighted in being ill used, would be likely to adopt, might be 
followed frequently by just, and sometimes by excessive retribution ; 
bat — " it is certain that we may appeal to the grateful confessions of 
the first Christians, that the greatest part of those magistrates who 
exercised in the provinces the authority of the Emperor or of the Senate, 
and to whose hands alone the jurisdiction of life and death was en* 
trusted, beoaved like men of polished manners and liberal education, 
who respected the rules of justice, and who were conversant with toe 
precepts of philosophy. t In one word, the Pagan magistrates neither 
were, nor pretended to be, under the influence of supernatural motives, 
and there are no natural motives to incline any men to be cruel and 
inexorable. 



CHAPTER XLII. 

THE FATHERS OF THE THIRD CENTURY. 



ORIGEN, A. D. 230. 

It is only necessary to follow the isoteric or interior evidences of the 
Christian religion below the close of the second century, for the sake of 
bringing the reader acquainted with the two most distinguished persons 
that ever were concerned with it ; Origen, its most distinguished priest* 
and Constantine, its most distinguished patron. Origen, was born in 
that great cradle and nursery of all superstition, Egypt, in the year 

* Qaaeque Ipse misseriraa, vidi 
Et quorum ! Quia talia fando I 
f Gibbon's Decline and Fail, chap. 15. 



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$19 FATHERS OP THE THIRD CENTURY. 

184 or 185— that is, the fifth or sixth of the Emperor Commodus, and 
died in the sixty-ninth or seventieth year of his age, A.D. 253, Though 
Euseiius flatly denies the assertion of Porphyry, that Origen had been 
originally a heathen,— and was afterwards converted to Christianity* 
yet Origen is proud to vindicate to himself his imitation of his pre- 
decessor, Pantsenus, in the study of profane learning. He had studied 
under that celebrated philosopher, Ammonius Saccas, who, in the 
second century had taught that " Christianity and Paganism, when 
rightly understood, differed in nonessential points, but had a common 
origin, and really were one and the same religion, nothing but the 
schismatical trickery of fanatical adventurers, who sought to bring over 
the trade and profits of spiritualizing into their own hands, having intro- 
duced a distinction where in reality there was no difference." 

This was unquestionably the orthodox doctrine of the second century, 
and it so entirely quadrates with all the historical phenomena, that one 
cannot but hold it honourable both to Origen's head and heart, that he 
has owned his early proficiency in the Ammonia* philosophy, under 
this, its illustrious master. 

Leonides, the father of Origen, is said to have suffered martyrdom, 
and to have been encouraged thereto by Origen (who was the oldest of 
his seven children) when not quite seventeen years of age : a fact, 
which if it were credible, would bear a very equivocal reading. 

In the sincerity of his devotion to the cause of Monkery — from 
which Christianity is unquestionably derived, " he was guilty of that 
rash act so well known," which he held to be hU duty, as inculcated by 
Christ in the celebrated Matt. xix. 12. His conduct at least demon- 
strates the existence of the text, as of high and unquestionable an- 
tiquity in his time, and the sincere prostration of his mind to its con- 
straining authority. 

This argument, adroitly handled, would constitute one of the strong- 
est evidences of Christianity : and played off with the blustering airs of 
sanctification and parade of learning, which are generally called in to 
the aid of canonical sophistication, might much puzzle the Sciolist in 
these studies. The difficulty, however, is instantly dissipated upon 
collation of the character of the text itself, with the facts of history 
which this Diegesis supplies. 

J. The text itself is unworthy of the character of rational and moral 
tsctilcation which Christians generally challenge for the discourses %d 
thai' divine master. 

2. It goes not to the extent of an institution of the practice there 
sp&ken of. 



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FAHTERS OF THE TWtD CtWURir. 31* 

3. Tbe practice is allowed, approved, and sanctioned, but not 
positively enjoined or commanded. 

4. The text implies the historical fact of such a practice having 
existed long anterior to the time of the speaker ;— and 

5. Necessarily supposes the antiquity and notoriety of its prevalence. 
—This it is, 

" But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this doctrine, 
save they to whom it is give*. For there are some eunuchs which were 
00 born from their mother's womb, end there are some eunuchs which 
were made eunuchs of men, and there be eunuchs which have made 
themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able 
to receive it, let him receive it." 

The Jewish law, which strictly forbad the making any sort of cuttings 
in the flesh, and allowed not an eunuch so much as to enter into the 
congregation of the Lord,* stands in resistless demonstration of the 
feet, that these eunuchs were aliens from the commonwealth, of Israel. 
We have to look then (where we shall assuredly find them,) to the monks 
of Egypt, who practised these excisions, and whose sacred books were 
none other than the original, or first written tale, from which our three 
&st gospels are derived, f whieh bad contained the whole gospel story 
and system, of doctrine as imported from India, had been kept in the 
secret archives of their monastery, and held binding on the consciences 
of all the friars of their monkish society, long anterior to the times of 
Augustus, in whose reign, or soon after, we may suppose the three 
evangelists to have been appointed by the Alexandrian College to give 
authenticated versions of them into tbe Greek language, for the purpose 
of the more extensive propagation of monkery. 

It has been said of Origen, that he had written six thousand volumes. 
St. Jerom asserts of him, that he had written more than any man could 
read. And it is from his unwearied pains in reading and writing that 
some think he had the name Adamantius—xindvr which, not without 
occasioning considerable perplexity, his writings are sometimes quoted/ 
Lardner thus sums up his character : " He had a capacious mind, and 
a large compass of knowledge, and throughout his whole life was a 
man of unwearied application in studying and composing works of 
various sorts. He had the happiness of uniting different accomplish- 
ments, being at once the greatest preacher and the most learned and 
voluminous writer of the age : nor is it easy to say which is most 
admirable, his learning or his virtue. In a word, it must be owned 

* Deut. xxiii. 1. 

f Such wss the opinion of Eusebius himself. 
40 B 



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$14 FATHERS OF THE THIRD CENTURY. 

that Origen, though not perfect, nor infallible, was a bright light in the 
church of Christ, and one of those rare personages that hare done 
honour to the human nature."* 

He is undoubtedly the most distinguished personage in the whole 
drama of the Christian evidences, nor can any man who believes 
Christianity to be a blessing to mankind, have the least hesitation in 
pronouncing him to have been one of the wisest, greatest, and best of 
men, that was ever engaged in promoting it 

Nothing is so difficult as to determine the limits of the part this truly 
great man has borne in the absolute constitution of the Christian reli- 
gion. He is the first author who has given us a distinct catalogue of 
the books of the New Testament, the first in whose writings such a 
name occurs as expressive of such a collection of writings : nor would 
any writings that he had seen fit to reject have ever conquered their way 
into canonical authority : nor any that he has once admitted, have been 
rejected. If there be consistency, harmony, or any where in those 
writings an observance of historical congruity,— the sacred text owes its 
felicity to the criticisms and emendations of Origen, who pruned excres- 
cences, exscinded the more glaring contradictions, inserted whole verses 
of his own pure ingenuity and conjecture, and diligently laboured, by 
claiming for the whole a mystical and allegorical sense, to rescue it from 
the contempt of the wise, and to moderate its excitement on the minds 
of the vulgar. 

His writings contained the finest and adroitest specimens of under- 
throwing that could be well adduced ; they are a sort of looking-glass, 
in which either wise or simple will be sure to see the face he likes best. 
^The all-adoring and all-digesting believer may read his sixty thousand 
volumes and never be startled out of the brown study of Christian ortho- 
doxy, — the reader who hath once learned to snuff his candle as he reads, 
will ever and anon perceive that Origen never played the fool, but once. 

His character needs only the apology which human nature claims for 
every man— Aw situation. He was in every sense of the word a master 
spirit, — a civilized being among the wild men of the woods* There is 
no occasion, however, to act on Dr. Lardner's avowed principle of con* 
cealing facts to promote piety. \ It 's not to be denied, that this wisest, 
greatest, best that ever bore the Christian name, relapsed at last into 
Paganism — publicly denied his Lord and Master Jesus Christ, and did 
sacrifice unto idols. I find that Eusebius, as well as Lardner, has 
omitted all mention of this grand and glorious (act 5 and but for the 

* Lardner, vol. I, p. 522. f Lardner, vol. I, p. 552. 

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FATHERS OF THE THIRD 08NTURY. 31$ 

avowed intention of Dr* Lardner to promote true piety, I should have 
considered his not .finding it in Eusebius, an excuse for the omission. It 
is to be found, however, in Origen's own writings, and is confirmed in 
his life, in the Greek of Suidas. His dolorous lamentation and repent- 
ance after this outrageous apostacy, presents us with the most authentic, 
and at the same time most demonstrative view of the interior charactet 
of the most primitive Christianity ; and must satisfy those who dream 
of a state of Christianity at any time before the Protestant Reform* 
ation, when what are called the principles of the Reformation were the 
principles of Christianity, how grossly their Protestant teachers have 
deceived them. 

The dolorous Lamentation of Origeru 

"In bitter affliction and grief of mind, I address myself unto them 
which hereafter shall read me, thus confoundedly. But how can I speak 
with tongue tied, with throat dammed up, and lips that refuse their 
office. I fall to the ground on my bare knees and make this my hum* 
ble prayer and supplication unto all the taints, that they will help me, 
silly wretch that I am, who by reason of the superfluity of my sin, 
dare not look up unto God. ye saints of the blessed God ! with 
watery eyes and sodden cheeks soaked in grief and pain, I beseech you 
to fall down before the mercy-seat of God, for me miserable sinner. 
Woe is me, because of the sorrow of my heart! Woe is me, for the 
affliction of my soul. Woe is me, O my mother, that ever thou 
broughtest me forth, an heir of the kingdom of God, but now become 
an inheritor of the kingdom of the Devil ; a perfect man, yea a priest* 
found wallowing in impiety ; a man beatified with honour and dignity, 
yet in the end blemished with ignorance and shame ; a burning light, 
yet forthwith darkened ; a running fountain, yet by and bye dried up ; 
who will give streams of tears unto mine eyes, that I may bewail my 
sorrowful plight ! O my lost priesthood] O my dishonoured ministry ! 
all you, my friends, tender my case 1 Pity me, O all ye my friends, 
in that I have now trodden under foot the seal and cognizance of my 
profession, and joined league with the devil 1 Pity jne, O ye my 

* So absolutely primitive is the Roman Catholic Church, even in the most 
exceptionable of its practices, that we have here, the very form of words in 
which, to this day, the benefit of masses and prayers for the souls in purgatory, 
is formally requested, as I have seen them stuck up on the walls of their 
chapels in Ireland : and in honest truth it must be infinitely more reasonable 
to pray to the saints, who being like ourselves, may be wheedled to our 
purposes, than to God, who is necessarily immutable, and consequently inex- 
orable, 



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S16 FATOftftft OP THE TURD CBNTURY. 

friends, in that I am rejected and cast away from the feed of God. It ii 
for my lewd life that I am thus polluted, and noted with open shame, 
Alas, how am I fallen! Alas, how am I thus come to nought ! There 
is no sorrow comparable unto my sorrow ; there is no affliction that 
exceedeth my affliction : there is no lamentation more lamentable than 
mine; neither is there any sin greater than my sin; and there is no 
salve for me. • Alas 1 O father Abraham 1 entreat for me, that I be not 
cut off from thy coasts. Rid me, O Lord, from the roaring lion ! Th€ 
whole assembly of saints doth make intercession unto thee for me. Let 
me be received again into the joy of my God, through the prayers and 
intercessions of the saints, through the earnest petitions of the Church 
which, sorroweth over me, and humbleth herself unto Jesus Christ; to 
whom, with the Father and the Holy Ghost; be all glory and honour, 
for ever and ever. ■ Amen" So far Origen. 

I have abridged this intolerably tedious farrago, without breaking a 
single sentence, or changing or supplying one word not authorized by 
the original text. 

The most distinguished of all the works of Origen is his celebrated 
answer to Celsus, contained in eight books, and from which it is very 
usual though an unfair thing to assume that we have what ought to be 
considered as the sentiments of Celsus. The exceeding intolerance of 
Christians against the writings of the enemies of their faith ; the fact 
of the destruction of such as they did write ; and the substitution of 
such as Christians themselves wrote and fathered upon them, in order 
to make them seem to have made none other than such objections ai 
were either trifling and weak in themselves, or could be most triom* 
phantly answered, should stand in bar of all reckoning upon Origen'i 
report of Celsus*s objections. The historical value of this important 
document is precisely this : it is a certificate to us of what the evidence! 
of Christianity were at the time of its date, in reference to inch objections 
as Christians themselves were willing to admit that it was liable to ; that 
is, it instructs us what Christians thought that their adversaries could 
not but think of them. I subjoin a continuous specimen of this cele- 
brated piece, freely availing myself of Bellamy's translation ; though 
Origen's Greek is in general so lucid and easy, that hardly any trans- 
lator could mislead us. 

OBtOXR'S ANSWER TO CELSUS. 

Chapter 1. — " Then Celsus goes on, and asserts that Judaism, with 
which the Christian religion has a very close connection, has all along 
been a barbarous sect, though he prudently forbears to reproach tin 
Christian religion, as if it were of a mean and unpolished original 19 



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FATfttftft OF THE THIRD OMHTTOt T\ SIT 

Chapter 2.—** Now let us see how Celsus reproaches the practical 
part of our religion, as containing nothing but what we hare in com* 
won with the heathens, nothing that is new or truly great. To this I 
. answer, that they who bring down the just judgments of God upon 
• themj by their notorious crimes, would never suffer by the^ hand of 
divine and inflexible justice, if all mankind had not some tolerable 
notions of moral good and eviL* 

Chapters 3 and 4. — A curious but idle allegory upon the story of this 
golden calf. 

Chapter 5. — " Then Celsus, speaking of Idolatry, does himself 
advance an argument that tends to justify and commend our practice.' 
Therefore endeavouring to show in the sequel of his discourse that our 
' notion of image-worship was not a discovery that was owing to the 
Scriptures, but that we have it in common with the heathens ; he quotes 
a passage in Heraclitus to this effect : 

" To this I answer, that since I have already granted that some 
common notions of good and evil are originally implanted in the minds 
of men, we need not wonder that Heraclitus and others, whether 
Greeks or barbarians, have publicly acknowledged to the world, thai 
they held the very same notions which we maintain." 

Chapter 6.—*" Then Celsus says, that all the power which the . 
Christians had was owing to the names of certain demon*, and their 
invocation of them. But this is a most notorious calumny. For the 
power which the Christians had was not in the least owing to enchant- 
ments, but to their pronouncing the name I. E. S. U. S., and making 
mention of some remarkable occurrences of his life. Nay the name of 
L E. S. U. 8. has such power over demons, that sometimes it has 

proved effectual, though pronounced by very wicked persons."* 

• 

• The prevalence of this persuasion is strongly implied in the very fair bar- 
gain proposed by Simon Magus, who, "when he saw that through laying on of* 
the Apostles' hands the Holy Ghost was given, he offered them moncv, saying, 
Give me also this power, that on whomsoever 1 lay hands, he may receive the Holy 
Ghost." (Acts viii. 1 9.) And in the ratal experiment of the seven sons of Sceva, 
who attempted to deal with the Devil, without having served a regular ap- 
prenticeship—** Jesus I know, and Paul I know," said the Devil " but who art 
vouV (Acts xix. 15.) It is directly asserted by the formal proclamation of St. 
Peter, " Be it known unto you all, that by tht name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth 
doth this man stand here before you whole; .for there is none other name under 
heaven in which we ought to be saved,***** « in *p*f cnAwu* It is a more than * 
curious quadrature with this, and many other passages to the like effect, that the 
name Jesus, and even the name Jesus Christ rf Nazareth, is worshipped in the 
Catholic church, distinctly from all relation to any person whatever, as having an 



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ItS FATHERS OF THE THIRD CRNlgT&Y 

Chapter 7.— Ceisus being represented to have objected that Christ 
was a very wicked man, and wrought his miracles by the power of 
magic, Origen answers: 

" Though we should grant that 'tis difficult for us to determine 
precisely by what power our Saviour wrought his miracles, yet 'Us very 
plain that the Christians made use of no enchantments, unless, indfeed, 
the name I. E. S. U. S„ and some passages of the Holy Scriptures, 
were a kind of sacred spell." 

Chapter 8. — In this chapter, Origen admits that there were some 
Abcah a Imperii, or state secrets, which are not fit to be communi- 
cated to the vulgar; and justifies the fact, from the secret doctrines 
of the Pagan philosophy. 

Chapter 9. — Presents nothing bearing on Christian evidence. 

Chapter 10. — " And Ceisus continues his discourse, and advises us 
to embrace no opinions but under the conduct of impartial reason, on 
account of the many and gross errors to which the contrary practice 
will shamefully and unavoidably expose us. And he compares those 
persons who take up any notions without due examination, to the 
designing priests of Mithras, Bacchus, Cybele, Hecate, or any other 
mock deity of the heathens. For as these impostors, having once got 
the ascendant over the common people, who were grossly ignorant, 
could turn and wind these silly cattle, as their interest or fancy might 
direct,* so he says, the very same thing was known to be the common 
practice of the Christians." 

In answer to this really formidable objection, instead of producing 
distinct historical testimony to demonstrate that the history of Jesus 
Christ rested on rational and convincing evidence, and could not 
therefore be fairly put upon a level with the fabulous legends of those 
mock deities, that never had any existence but in the conceit of their 
deluded worshippers, Origen himself defends and justifies the self-same 



independent charm and virtue in the mystical combination of the letters them** 
reives, like the Abracadabra of the Egyptians, the Shem IIemophorrsh of the 
Jews, and the Open Srssame of the Arabians. God forbid it should bethought 
to hare had no more than this sort of talisraanic virtue, in its eternal repetitions at 
tl e close of out Protestant prayers, " through Jesus Christ our Lord", which 
ought always to be chanted 1 

• Surely this objection of Ceisus, as allowed to have been made by him, by 
Hfs adversary, is a proof that he was a wise and good man, and never did or 
would have shut his mind against evidence, or have hardened his heart against 
conviction. It is utterly impossible that such a man should have rejected Chris* 
tiamty, had it in his days possessed historical and rational evidences* \, 



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FATHERS OP THB THIRD CENTURY, ftl* 

principle of implicit faith, from which all those fabulous legends and 
mock deities derived their authority, and proceeds— 

■ ** A vast number of persons who have left those horrid debaucheries 
in which they formerly wallowed, and have professed to embrace the 
Christian religion, uhall receive and embrace a bright and massy crown 
when this frail and short life is ended, though they don't stand to exa- 
amine the grounds on which their faith is built, nor defer their con- 
version till they have a fair opportunity and capacity to apply them* 
selves to rational and learned studies. And since our adversaries are 
continually making such a stir about our taking things on trust,* I 
answer, that we, who see plainly and have found the vast advantage that 
the common people do manifestly and frequently reap thereby — (who 
make up by far the greater number) — I say, we (the Christian clergy), 
who are so well advised of these things, do professedly teach men to 
believe without a severe examination." 

Chapter 33. — " I have this to say further to the Greeks, who won't 
believe that our Saviour was born of a Virgin ; that the Creator of the 
world, if he pleases, can make every animal bring forth its young in the 
same wonderful manner.f As for instance, the vultures which propa- 
gate their kind in this uncommon way, as the best writers of natural 
history do acquaint us. What absurdity is there then in supposing, 
that the all-wise God, designing to bless mankind with an extraordinary 

* So! so! — So! so! And this, it seems, was the grievance from the first. 
The heathens wanted rational evidence for Christianity ; but Christians could not 
produce it ! 

f From this it should seem, that the holy Virgin laid an egg ; and that our 
blessed Saviour should rather be said to have been hatched than born. This sense 
is further supported by the express assurance of scripture, that the male agent 
in his generation, was "in bodily shape like a dove.' — Mark i. 10, John i. 32. 
Bead, also, with awful reverence, that angelic testimony, " The Holy Ghost shall 
come upon thee, and the power of the Highest shall — tvirmaa-u — thee ; therefor* 
also, that holy thing (observe, it is not said, child or babe, but that holy thing,) 
which shall be born of thee, shall be called the Son of God, Luke i. 35. Milton 
describes this as the peculiar function of the Holy Spirit, who 
u Dove-like, sat brooding on the vast abyss, 
And? made it pregnant." — Paradise Lost, Book i. 
And as it might seem in relation to this adorable mystery, the prophet Isaiah 
asks, " Who shall declare hU generation ?" Cb. liii. v. 8. I abhor no impiety 
more affectionately than that of our Unitarian divines, the most inconsistent, 
the most egregious, the most absurd of all sophists, who hesitate not at the 
most audacious blasphemies upon the mystical incarnation, and persist in 
representing Christ as a mere man, though unable to produce so much as one 
single proof, either scriptural or historical, that any such mere man ever existed 
at all. 



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890 FAXBEA8 OF TUB THIRD CENTURY 

and truly divine teacher, should so order matters, that our blessed 
Saviour should not be bom in the ordinary way of human generation?" 

The work of Celsus, which Origen thus refutes, appears to have been 
entitled the thus wom>, or the True Logos, written at least one 
hundred years before the time of Origen. 

" Celsus and Porphyry," says Chrysostom, " are sufficient witnesses 
to the antiquity of the scriptures; for I presume that tbey did not 
oppose writings which had been published since their own times.*" 
This writer, however, chooses to forget that it is not true that we are 
in possession of the evidence of Celsus and Porphyry. Nor would 
evidence of the antiquity of the scriptures afford any presumption that 
they were written by the persons to whom they are ascribed ; while the 
presumption remains, that they are actually too ancient, and were, as 
to their general story and contents, in being before the life-time of 
those persons. 

Dr. Lardner pronounces this answer of Origen to Celsus " an excel- 
lent performance, greatly esteemed and celebrated, not only by Euse- 
bius and Jerom, but likewise by many judicious men of late times, par- 
ticularly by Dupin, who says, that it is polite, just, and methodical ; 
not only the best work of Origen, but the completest and best written 
apology for the Christian religion, which the ancients have left us.f 



ST. Gregory, Thaumaturgut, a. p. 243. 
Bishop of Neoccesarca. 

I cannot present the reader with fairer grounds of judging of the 
whole worth and value of the evidences of the Christian religion, than 
by laying before him what those evidences will require him to believe 
of the character and actions of the most remarkable personages con- 
cerned in its establishment and propagation. This I do, in none other 
than the lines and colours, the showing and acknowledgments, their own 
representations in their own words, not of the humbler and feebler 
advocates of Christianity, but of such as Christians themselves with 
justice and reason boast of, as the best, discreetest^ and ablest defen- 
ders their cause ever had. If Dr. Lardner could not have given a just 
and faithful representation of what the evidences of the Christian re- 
ligion really were, or has not done so ; who on earth shall be proposed 
as worthier of all acceptation ? If on his representation* it shall appear 

• Lardner, vol* iv. p. 114. * Dupin Bibl Origins, p 142. 



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FATHERS OF THE THIRD CENTURY. 3*1 

that Christianity rests ultimately and strictly on miraculous evidence, 
and on the probability of a continuous series of divine interpositions and 
interference of the almighty power of God, not 'merely at first to 
promulge, but afterwards to propagate and continue this supernatural 
intimation of his will to man ; what right or reason have our Unitarian 
divines to give themselves insolent airs of philosophical assurance, or 
to affect to treat those who reject miraculous evidence, as if they could 
not do so without rejecting historical met and rational probability at the 
same time? 

St. Gkegort, Bishop of Neocsesarea in Pontus, was one of Origen's 
most noted scholars. It is fit we should now have a more particular 
history of this renowned convert and bishop, of the best times or near 
them, who is usually called Thaumaturgus, or the Wonder-worker, 
for the many and great miracles wrought by him.* Gregory's parents 
were Gentiles. — " As soon as Origen saw Gregory (when a youth), and 
his brother Athenodorus, he neglected no means to inspire them with 
a love of philosophy, as a foundation of true religion and piety.f Of 
Origen tbey learned logic, physics, geometry, astronomy, ethics. He 
encouraged them in reading of all sorts of ancient authors, poets, and 
philosophers, whether Greeks or barbarians, restraining them from none 
but such as denied a Deity or a Providence, from whom no possible 
advantage could be obtained." From Gregory of Nyssa, in Cappadocia, 
who flourished about a hundred years after this Gregory Thaumaturgus, 
Dr. Lardner transcribes the most material things of his life. Nyssen 
says, that Gregory studied secular learning for some time at Alexandria, 
where there was a great resort of youth from all parts for the sake o* 
philosophy and medicine. Our young Gregory was even then dis- 
tinguished by the sobriety and discretion which appeared in his conduct. 
" A lewd woman having been employed by some idle people to disgrace 
him by indirect but impudent insinuations, his reputation was vindicated 
in a remarkable manner, for the woman was immediately seized with 

* Lardner, vol. i. p. 243. I punctiliously give the words of Lardner, that 
the reader may see with what a grace this rational Socinian grapples with miracles 
which we cannot believe, and dare not deny. 

f This philosophy, which we meet with at every tum, as always constituting 
the batii ox the Christian religion ; this Alexandria, always the centre and nursery 
of this philosophy ; these congresses of lazy pedants in universities, where young 
men are to be trained and broken in to the business of becoming impostors them- 
selves in their turn, are matters, at the least infinitely suspectable. Honesty 
never needed theml Compare p. 297 and 303, in this Diegesis— Justin, 
Melito, &c. all professors in like manner of this Eclectic philosophy. 

41 2f 



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Stt FATHERS Of THE THIRD CEKTOftr. 

such horrible fits, as demonstrated them to be a judgment of heaven: 
nor was she relieved from the demon that had taken possession of bar, 
till Gregory bad interceded with God for her, and obtained thepardon 
of her fault." This miracle occurred while Gregory was yet a heathen 
«— "his family, however, was rich and noble." His ordination to the 
Christian ministry, it seems, took piece even before bis conversion to 
Christianity. " Phedimus, Bishop of Anasea, knowing the worth of 
this young man, and being grieved that a person of such accomplish* 
ments should live useless in the world, was desirous to con s ec ra te him 
to God and his church;" but " Gregory was^hy of such a charge, and 
industriously concealed himself from the bishop, whose design he wh 
aware o£ At length, Phedimus, tired of his fruitless attempts to meet 
Gregory, and being blessed with the gift of foreknowledge, consecrated 
him to God, though bodily absent, assigning him also a city which till 
that time was so addicted to idolatry, that in it, and in all the oountiy 
round about, there were not above seventeen believers. Gregory was 
then at the distance of three days' journey. He only desired e£ him by 
whom he had been ordained, a short time to prepare himself for the 
office, nor had he courage to undertake the work of preaching, till he 
had been informed of the truth by revelation. And while he was en- 
gaged in deep meditation, he had a magnificent and awful vision in his 
chamber." The Virgin Mary, and St. John the beloved disciple, ap- 
peared to him, " encompassed also by a bright light too strong for hhn 
to look upon directly. He heard these persons discourse together about 
the doctrines in which he desired to be informed, and he perceived who 
they were, for they called each other by name ; and the Virgin desired 
that John the Evangelist would teach that young man the Mystery of 
Piety, and he replied that he was not unwilling to do what was desired 
by the mother of our Lord. John then gave the instruction he wanted, 
which, wben they had disappeared, Gregory wrote down. According 
to that faith he always preached ; and left it with his church as an in- 
valuable treasure, by which means his people from that time to this, 
were preserved from all heretical pravity." . * 

Then follows the stupendous miracle, which I find quoted in Middle- 
ton's Free Inquiry, which I here abridge as much as possible : — 

The holy Gregory, in travelling to take possession of his bishopric, 
was overtaken by a storm and benighted, so that for shelter be was 
obliged to spend the night in one of the heathen temples; in conse- 
quence of which, when the priests came to perform their idolatrous rites 
tie next morning, " he was answered by the demon, that be could no 
more appear in that place, because of him who had lodged there the 
foregoing night The priest, greatly enraged at this, pursued Gregory, 



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FATHERS OP THB THIRD CBNTC/ftT. «» 

and threatened to inform the magistrates against bim ; but Gregory 
told the priest, that " God had given him such divine power, that " he 
could expel demons from any place and re-admit them, as he saw fit : 
and as a demonstration of such power, he took a slip of paper and wrote 
upon it the words * Gregory to Satan: Enter f This paper being laid 
upon tfce altar, and the accustomed Paganish rites performed, the demon 
appeared as usual ; which so convinced the Pagan priest of the su- 
perior power possessed by Christians, that he left the service of Satan, 
and became a minister of Jesus Christ, and was afterwards one of 
Gregory's deacons. — But some doubts still remaining, Gregory wrought 
another evident miracle— -at his command, a large heavy stone ljing 
before them, moved as if it had life, and settled itself in the place 
Gregory directed. 

Again, there were two brothers at variance with each other, whom 
Gregory could by no means reconcile. A certain lake was the matter 
in dispute. When they were about to decide the cause by arms, 
Gregory went to the lake the night before, and at his prayers it was 
dried up ; so that there was no lake left for them to contend for, 

Again : — " The river Sycus often overflowing, to the great damage 
of the neighbouring country ; at the desire of the people who suffered 
by its inundations, Gregory prescribed its proper limits, which it never 
passed afterwards.* 

"After his return to Neocsssatea, Gregory cured a young roan, 
possessed of a demon ; and a great many people were delivered from 
demons, and released of their diseases by only having a piece of linen 
brought to them, which had been breathed upon by him." 

After these, and several other marvellous relations of the same sort, 
and some trifling objections started against them, it is of importance 
that the reader should be aware, that it is none other than the judicious 
and learned Dr. Lardner himself, who is driven to the distress of having 
to say — 

" I do not intend to deny that Gregory wrought miracles ; for I 
suppose he did, as I shall acknowledge more particularly by and bye. 
Nevertheless, there is no harm in making these remarks, if tbey are 
just, or in showing that Nysten's relations are defective, and want some 
tokens of credibility with which we should have been mightily pleased." 

Gregory's works are, a panegyrical oration in praise of Origen, pro* 
Bounced in 239, still extant, and unquestionably his. Dupki says that 
it is very eloquent, and that it may be reckoned one of the finest pieces 
of rhetoric in all antiquity— a paraphrase of the book of Bcclesiastes, 
and that self-same creed or copy of the faith which we may believe he 
copied immediately from the dictation of St John* 



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m FATHERS OF THE THIRD CENTURY- 

" His history, at delivered by authors of the fourth and following 
centuries, particularly by Nyssen, it is to be feared, has in it somewhat 
of fiction ; but," adds Dr. Lardner— (yes, they are the very words of 
Lardner himself)--" there can be no reasonable doubt made but he 
was very successful in making converts to Christianity in the country 
of Pontus, about the middle of the third century ; and that bejjde hu 
natural and acquired abilities, he was favoured with extraordinary gifts 
of the spirit, and wrought miracles of surprising power. The plain and 
express testimonies of Basil and others, at no great distance of time and 
place from Gregory, must be reckoned sufficient grounds of credit with 
regard to these things. The extraordinary gifts of the spirit had not 
then entirely ceased : but Gregory was favoured with such gifts greatly 
beyond the common measure of other Christians or bishops at that sea- 
son. Yet, as St. Jerom intimates, it i» likely that he was more famous 
for his signs and wonders than his writings."* 

With respect to Gregory's appointing anniversary festivals and solem- 
nities in honour of the martyrs of his diocese, (as I have already given 
the important passage from Mosheim, in the chapter of Admissions,!) 
Dr. Lardner contends against it, that he is " unwilling to take this par- 
ticular upon the credit of Nyssen ; because this childish method of 
making converts appears unworthy of so wise and good a man as Gregory. 
Nor is it likely that those festivals should be instituted by one who hail 
the gift of miracle*) and therefore a much better way of bringing men 
to religion and virtue." See all these passages, purporting to be from 
Dr. Lardner's immortal work on the Credibility of the Gospel History, 
in his first volume, under the article St. Gregory of Keocst sarea. I 
have selected this Life of Pope Gregory the Wonder-worker, not so 
much to show the picture as the painter ; and to set before my readers 
a demonstration of the important and consequential fact, that the ablest 
and most rational advocate of Christianity, is, in its vindication, driven 
on the necessity of using a sort of language which, on any other theme 
than that, he would have been ashamed of. We see the most eminent 
of ail writers on the Christian evidences, driven to the God-help-u* ok 
subscribing to a belief in the most ridiculous and contemptible miracles, 
rather than he will accept, even from his own authorities, the clear and 
natural solution of the difficulty — even that he who was ordained a 
Christian bishop, while yet he continued a Pagan, should have owed his 
success in converting others to the same slide-the-butcher system which 

* His writings are not to be disparaged, since they afford the clearest evidence 
of the genuineness of his miracles by proving that he was no conjuror. 
f See Diegesis, p. 48* 



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FATHER* OP THE THIRD CENTURY. 325 

had feeen so successfully practised on himself; that is, letting them con- 
tinue Pagans all the while, only calling them Christians. 

From the short notice which Socrates has of this Father, it should 
seem that the Holy Ghost wan somewhat premature in his gifts to Gre- 
gory, since he got possession of the power of working miracles before he 
became a convert to the Christian faith : " being yet a layman, he wrought 
many miracles, he cured the sick, chased away devils by his epistles, and 
converted the Gentiles and Ethnics unto the faith, not only with words, 
but by deeds of far greater force."* 



8T. CTPRIAN, AJ>. 248. 

Bishop of Carthage. 

ThasciuB Ccecilius Cyprianua was an African, who was converted from 
Paganism to Christianity, in the year 248, and suffered martyrdom in the 
year 258. So that the greatest part of his life was spent in heathenism* 
Cyprian had a good estate, which he sold and gave to the poor immedi- 
ately upon his conversion. His advancement to the highest offices of 
the church was strikingly rapid ; he was made presbyter the year after 
his conversion, and bishop of Carthage, the year after that. And let it 
not seem invidious to state, what may be a characteristic truth, in the 
words of Dr. Lardner himself, " The estate w>ich Cyprian had sold for 
the benefit of the poor, was by some favourable providence restored to 
him again." He was bishop of a most flourishing church, the metropolis 
of a province, and neither in fame nor fortune a loser by his conversion. 

There can be no just grounds to disparage the renown of his martyr* 
dom : which though unquestionably disgraceful to the government under 
which it happened, was not attended with any of those aggravating cir- 
cumstances of childish cruelty, which throw an air of suspicion over 
almost all the other narratives of martyrdom, that have come down t6 
us. Cyprian had rendered himself obnoxious to the government under 
which he had long enjoyed his episcopal dignity in peace and safety :f 

* Socrates Scholast, lib. 4, c. 22. 

X " The constitution of every particular church in those times was a well-tem- 
pered monarchy. The bishop was the monarch, and the presbytery was his 
senate." — Principles of the Cyprianic Age, by John Sage, a Scottish bishop, 1695, 
p. 32. " Cyprian carried his spiritual authority to such a pitch, as to claim the 
right of putting his rebellious and unruly deacon to death/'— -Ibid. p. 33. Surely 
here was cause enough to induce any government to call such a traitor to some 
sort of reckoning? 



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896 FATHERS OP THE FOURTH CENTURA 

and it is impossible not to see from the intolerant turbulence of his cha- 
racter, his restless ambition, and his inordinate claims of more than hu- 
man authority, that more than human patience would have Ueen re- 
quired on the part of any government on earth, to have brooked the 
eternal elashings of the civil administration with his assumed superior 
authority over the minds of the subjects of the empire. He bad ben 
twice banished, and subsequently recalled, and reinstated in his posses- 
sions and dignities, but again and again persisting in holding councils 
and assemblies, and enacting decrees, in defiance and actual solicitation 
of martyrdom, he was judicially sentenced to be beheaded, upon which 
he exclaimed, God be thanked, and suffered accordingly, on the 14th of 
September, in the year 258. As his own historians tell the tale, his 
execution was attended with no additional circumstance of cruelty, 
anger, or indignation, but occurred amidst the sympathy of his Christian 
friends, and the admiration and regret even of those whom a sense of 
public duty had enforced to condemn him. w It is needless, 1 ' says St 
Jerom, " to give a catalogue of his works, they are brighter than the 
sun." St. Austin calls him a blessed martyr, and there can be no doubt 
that he has as good a claim, as any other tyrant who ever expiated his 
tyranny in the same way, to that title. 



CHAPTER XLIII. v 

THE FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CE^tURY. 



COKSTAHT1NE, A.D. 306. 

The character with whom, next to Origan, itmosteonoesns the Chris* 
tian inquirer to be acquainted, is the Emperor Constantino the Great, 
under whose reign and auspices, Christianity became the established 
religion, and but for whom, as fhr as human probabilities can be calcu- 
lated, it never would have come down to us. 

Constantine, called the Great, son of Flavius Valerius Constantino 
surnamed Chlorus, and Helena, was born on the 27th of February, is 
the year of Christ. 272, or as some think, in 273, or as others, in 274; 
was converted to the Christian religion on the night of the 26th of Oc- 
tober, aj>. 312 ; became sole emperor both of the East and West, abort 
the year, 324 ; reigned about thirty-one years from the death of his fr 



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FATOSX4 0* Tdfi FOURTH CENTUHY. &ff 

then CoMtontius ; and died oa Whitsunday, May 22d, 348,* Felieianus 
and Tatian being consuls, the second year of the two hundred and 
seventy*eigbth Olympiad, in the sixty-sixth year of his age.+ 

The beatings on the evidences of the Christian religion demand from 
us — that we should inform ourselres of the character of this great hero 
of the cause, 

1. As drawn by Christian historians and divines. 

2. As appearing in the incontrovertible evidence of admitted facts. 

3. The ostensible motives of his conversion. 

4. The evidences of the Christian religion as they appeared to him. 
I. " I do, by no means," says Dr. Lardner, "think that Constantino 

was a man of cruel disposition — (p. 342.) Though there may have 
been some transactions in his reign which cannot be easily justified, and 
others that must be condemned : yet we are not to consider Constan- 
tino as a cruel prince or a bad man."J j 

" Constantine was remarkably tall, of a comely and majestic presence, 
and great bodily strength^ It may be concluded, from the whole tenor 
of his life, that he was a person of no mean capacity. Indeed, his mind 
was equal to his fortune, great as it was ; his chastity, || together with 
his valour, justice, and prudence, is commended by a heathen panegyrist ; 
his many acts of bounty to the poor, and his just edicts, are arguments 
of a merciful disposition and a love of justice. He was, moreover, a 
sincere believer of the Christian religion, of which he, first of all the 
Roman emperdrs, made an open profession. , 

" In a word, the conversion of Constantine to Christianity was a fa- 
vour of divine providence, and of great advantage to the Christians, and 
his reign may be reckoned a blessing to the Roman empire on the whole." 
Thus far, Dr. Lardner-f 

I find no directly drawn character of Constantine in the Ecclesiastical' 
History of Socrates Scholasticus, except that he tells us, in general terms, 
that " Constantine the emperor, fixing his whole mind upon such things 
as set forth the glory of God, behaved himself in all things as becometh 
a Christian, erecting churches from the ground, and adorning them with 
goodly and gorgeous consecrated ornaments : moreover, shutting up the 
temples of fie Heathens, and publishing unto the world (in way of de- 

* LamWa Credibility, vol. ii. p. 327. 

t Socrates Scholasticus, lib. i. c. 26. 

t See my 14th letter from Oakham, published in the 1st and 2d volumes of the 
Lion. 

§ " Whether Helena was the lawful wife of Constantius Chlorus, or only his 
concubine, is a disputable point."— Lardaer, vol. ii. p. 322. 

|| What has that to do with it ? V Vo'. ii., p. 345. 



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&* FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 

rision) the gay images glittering within them.** In his decrees and 
letters as preserved by this historian, Constantino entitles himself " the 
puissant, the mighty* and noble emperor/' and in the synodical epistle 
of the Council of Nice, he is called " the most virtuous emperor, the 
most godly emperor, Constantine."t 

The mouldering pages of the historian Evagriun, who had been one 
of the emperor's lieutenants, are enlivened with a truly evangelical in- 
vective against the Ethnic Zosimus, in which no better names than, "0 
wicked spirit ! thou fiend of hell ! O thou lewed varlet I" &c., are found, 
for his having dared to defame the godly and noble emperor, Constan- 
tine.J 

But Eusebius — who would never lie nor falsify, except to promote the 
dory of God, — the conscientiou* Eusebius Pamphilus, who has written 
his life, seems to know no bounds of exaggeration in his praise. "lam 
amazed " (says this veracious bishop, on whose fidelity all our knowledge 
of ecclesiastical antiquity must ultimately depend) " I am amazed, when 
I contemplate such singular piety and goodness. Moreover, when! 
look up to heaven, and in my mind behold his blessed soul living in 
God's presence, and there invested (crowned) with a blessed and unfad- 
ing wreath of immortality ; considering this, I am oppressed with silent 
amazement, and my weakness makes me dumb, resigning his due enco- 
mium to Almighty God, who alone can give to Constantino the praise he 
merits." 

" Constantine alone, of all the Roman emperors, was beloved of God, 
and hath left us the idea of his most pious and religious life as an inimi- 
table example for other men to follow, at a humble distance."^ 

" Constantine was the first of all the emperors who was regenerated 
by the new birth of baptism, and signed with the sign of the cross ; and 
being thus regenerated, his mind was so illuminated, and by the raptures 
of faith so transported, that he admired in himself the wonderful work 
of God : and when the centurions and captains admitted to his presence 
did bewail and mourn for his approaching death, because they should 
lose so good and gracious a prince, he answered them, ' that he now 
only began to live, and that he now only began to be sensible of happi- 
ness, and therefore, he now only desired to hasten, rather than to slack 
or stay his passage to God.*|| 

• Socrates Sen. Eccl. Hist. lib. i. c. 2. f Socrates, lib. i. c. 6. 

I Evagrius, lib. iii. c. 41. 

§ The learned reader will find I take some liberties with the text, never depart* 
ing, however, from its sense — but, " an inimitable example for all men to follow," 
which is the literality, is Irish rather than English panegyric. 

|| Life of Constantine, lib. it. c. 63. 



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FATHERS OF TUB FOURTH CENTURY 389 

" For he alone of all the Roman emperors did, with most religious 
zeal, honour and worship God. He alone, with great liberty of speech, 
did profess the gospel of Jesus Christ. He alone, did honour his church 
more than all the rest He alone, abolished the wicked adoration of 
idols ; and, therefore, he alone, both in his life, and after his death, hath 
been crowned with such honours as no one hath obtained, neither among 
the Grecians nor Barbarians, nor in former times among the Romans. 
Since no age hath produced any thing that might be paralleled or com- 
pared to Constantine."* So much for his praise ! 

II. " Murder, though it hath no tongue, will speak with most miracu- 
lous organ? 

The adulations of interested sycophants, and the applause of priests 
and bishops, will not erase the more convincing evidence of those stub- 
born things, facts, that will not be suppressed, and cannot lie. Even 
Lardner, who omits entirely the circumstances of aggravation, acknow- 
ledges the deeds, which give a very different complexion to Constantine's 
character, from that, which the honour of Christianity requires that it . 
should wear. The hireling voice of priestcraft would extol him to the 
skies. Nor ought we in judging of the worth of a churchman's pane- 
gyric, to forget that even the cautious and ingenuous Lardner, who has, 
without evidence of a single act of wrong against him, branded the ami- 
able and matchlessly virtuous Julian, as a persecutor, has not one ill 
word to spare for the Christian Constantine, who drowned his unoffend- 
ing wife, Fausta, in a bath of boiling water, beheaded his eldest son 
Crispus, in the very year in which he presided in the Council of Nice, 
murdered the two husbands of his sisters Constantia, and Anastasia, 
murdered his own father-in-law, Maximian Herculius, murdered his own 
nephew, being his sister Constantia's son, a boy only twelve years old, 
md murdered a few others If which actions, Lardner, with truly Chris- 
tian moderation, tells us, " seem to cast a reflection upon him. 9 ' Among 
rtiose few others, never be it forgotten, was Sopater, the Pagan priest, 

♦•Life of Constantine, lib. iv. c. 75. 

t His slaughter bill, methodically arranged, runs thus : — 

Maximian His wife's father a.d. 310 

Bassianus. .... .His sister Anastasia's husband . . 314 

licinianus His nephew, by Constantia . . . 319 

Fausta His wife 320! 

Sopater His former friend ...... 321 

Ueinius His sister Constantia's husband « . 325 

Crispus His own son 326 

Leligio perperit scelerosa atque impia facta. — Lucret* lib. 1. v, 84. 

42 2t 



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330 FATHERS OP THE FOURTH CENTURY. 

who fell a victim and a martyr to the sincerity of his attachment to 
Paganism, and to the honesty of his refusing the consolations of heathen- 
ism to the conscience of the royal murderer. 

" The death of Crispus, (says Dr. Lardner) is altogether without soy 
good excuse; so likewise is the death of the young Iicinianus, who 
could not then be more than a little above eleven years of age, and ap- 
pears not to have been charged with any fault, and can hardly be sus- 
pected of any/'* Then why may we not consider Constantino to hare 
been either a cruel prince or a bad man? "Here then, (continues 
Lardner, whose work is written expressly to promote true piety and vir- 
tue,) here lies the general excuse, or alleviation of these faults, (pecca- 
dilloes, he means.) Prosperity is a dangerous state, full of temptation, 
and puts men off their guard, and all these executions happened very 
near to one another, when Constantino was come as it were to the top 
of his fortune, and was in the greatest prosperity.*^ Reader! imagine 
thou seest his noble son imploring a father's mercy — but in vain. Ima- 
gine thou seest his innocent wife supplicating for rather any other death 
at his hands than that most horrible one of the boiling bath — but in 
vain. Think that thou seest the poor unoffending child upon his knees 
lifting his innocent hands to beg his life, and his moat holy uncle will 
not regard him. Think that thou nearest the distracted shrieks of the 
fond doating mother, the beautiful Constantia, with dishevelled hair and 
heart-broken moans, entreating her brother to spare her son — but in 
vain. Not a wife's anguish, nor a sister's tears, nor nearness of kin- 
dred, nor matchless woman's tenderness, nor guileless youth's inno- 
cence, could soften the heart of this evangelical cut-throat, this godly 
and holy child-killer. Then, contemplate the coin which Eusebius tells 
us was struck to perpetuate his memory, " whereon was engraven the 
effigies of this blessed man, with a scarf bound about his bead, on tbe 
one side, and on the other sitting and driving a chariot, and a hand 
reached down from heaven to receive and take him up."$ 

When one finds such a writer as Lardner, (to say nothing of the egre- 
gious falsifications of Eusebius) thus endeavouring to whitewash Con- 
stantine, because he was a Christian emperor, and to affix on those para- 
gons of human virtue, Julian and Marcus Antoninus, the guilt of per- 
secution, merely because they were Pagan emperors, not only -without 
evidence against them, but in conflict with the most irrefragable proofs 
that they were as clear from that guilt, as the sun's disk from darkness ; 

* Lardner, vol. 2, p. 342. 
+ Lardner, vol. 2. p. 344 
J Eusebius's Life of Constantine,t>ook 4, chap. 73, p. 6, fbt. 



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PATHERS OP THE FOURTH GBNTURT. 831 

it is not illiberal to find the only excuse we can for these historians, to 
blame their principles rather than themselves, and to conclude that there 
is something in the strength and intensity of their religious affection, 
which suspends in them the faculty of perceiving or communicating 
truths, so long as that affection is in its paroxysm.* 

It is however highly honourable to Lardner, that he has the genero- 
sity to speak in terms of less qualified censure of Constantine's intolerance, 
and to admit that the two prevailing evils of his reign were avarice and 
hypocrisy. f "The laws of Constantine against the heathens," he ac- 
knowledges, " are not to be justified. How should Constantine have a 
right to prohibit all his subjects from sacrificing and worshipping at the 
temples ? Would he have liked this treatment, if some other prince had 
become a Christian at that time, and he still remained a heathen? What 
reason had he to think that all men received light and conviction when 
he did ? And if they were not convinced, how could he expect that 
they should act as he did V'% 

Monsieur Le Clerc justly observes, that "they that continued hea- 
thens were no doubt extremely shocked at the manner in which the 
statues of their gods were treated, and could not consider the Christians 
as men of moderation; for in short, those statues were as dear to them, 
as any thing the most sacred could be to the Christians.^ 

In the form and wording of several of Constantine's edicts, we have 
specimens of that conjunction of holiness and blood-thirstiness, religion . 
and murder, which pourtrays his character with a precision and fidelity 
that needs no further illustration. 

1« " Constantine the puissant, the mighty and noble emperor, unto this 
bishops, pastors, and people, wheresoever* 

" Moreover we thought good, that if there can be found extant any 
work or book compiled by Arius, the same should be burned to ashes, 
so that not only his damnable doctrine may thereby be wholly rooted 
out, but also that no relic thereof may remain unto posterity. This also 
we straightly command and charge, that if any man be found to hide or 
conceal any book made by Arius, and not immediately bring forth the 
said book, and deliver it up to be burned, that the said offender for so 
doing shall die the death. For as soon as he is taken, our pleasure is, 

• See this deduction illustrated in a succession of the Author's letters from 
Oakham, in " The Lion/' vol. 1 . 

t Lardner's Credibility, vol. 2, p. 345. J Il/d, p. *44 

§ HtM. Univ. U 15, p 54. 



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339 FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CFNTUBT 

that his head be stricken off from his shoulder*. God beep you in his 
tuition.** 

2. Ccnstantine's speech in the council concerning peace and concord. 

"Having by God's assistance gotten the victory over mine enemies, 
I entreat you therefore, beloved ministers of God, and servants of our 
Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, to cut off the heads of this hydra of 
heresy, for so shall ye please both God and me"f 

III. MOTIYE8 OF CON STAN TUte'S CONVERSION. 

A» say his friends. 

" Con stan tine the Emperor, being certified of the tyrannous govern- 
ment of Maxentius, devised with himself which way possibly he might 
rid the Romans from under this grievous yoke of servitude, and dispatch 
the tyrant out of life. Deliberating thus with himself, he forecasted 
also what God he were best to call upon for aid, to wage battle with 
the adversary. He remembered how that Diocletian, who wholly 
dedicated himself unto the service of the heathenish Gods, prevailed 
nothing thereby 5 also he persuaded himself for certain, that his rather 
Constantius, who renounced the idolatry of the Gentiles, led a more 
fortunate life : % musing thus doubtfully with himself, and taking his 
journey with his soldiers, a certain vision appeared unto him, as it was 
strange to behold, so indeed incredible to be spoken of. About noon, 
the day somewhat declining, he saw in the sky a pillar of light, in the 
form of a cross, whereon was engraved the inscription, ' In this over- 
come J This vision so amazed the Emperor, that he, mistrusting his 
own sight, demanded of them that were present, whether they perceived 
the vision, which when all with one consent had affirmed, the wavering 
mind of the Emperor was settled with that divine and wonderful sight 
The night following, Jesus Christ himself appeared to him, in his sleep, 
saying — " Frame to thyself the form of a cross, after the example oj 
the sign which appeared unto thee 9 and bear the same against thy 
enemies, as a Jit banner, or token of victory >" '§ 

• In Socrates Scholasticus, lib. I, c. 0, fol. p. 22?. 

f Euseb. Vita Const, lib. 3, c. 12. 

J Compare this with the apology ofMelito ; and the result is, a demonstration 
that good or ill luck was all that turned the scale between the claims of Chris- 
tianity and of Paganism. — Djeoesis, p. 320. 

§ Socrates Eccl. Hist. lib. 1, c. 1. It is to be regretted that these words of 
Christ have not been received into the canon of the New Testament, as it u 
certain there are none therein contained, of higher authority. 



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FATHERS OP THE FOURTH CENTURY. 33S 

Bat let us hear the account of " that lewd varlet," " that wicked 
spirit and fiend of hell,"* as Socrates calls him, the Ethnic Zosimus, 
who dared to revile Constantino, and rail at Christians. These fiends 
of hell make none the worse historians, but always contrive to give an 
air of rational probability to their infernal falsehoods, which divine 
truth (being written solely to exercise our faith) could never pretend 
to. — " This lewd varlet goeth about to defame the godly and noble 
Emperor Constantine, for he saith, that he slew his son Crispus very 
lamentably ; that he dispatched his wife Fausta, by shutting her up in 
a boiling bath ; that when he would have had his priests to purge him 
by sacrifice, of these horrible murthers, and could not have his purpose, 
(for they had answered plainly, it lay not in their power to cleanse 
him), he lighted at last upon an Egyptian, who came out of Iberia, and 
being persuaded by him that the Christian faith was of force to wipe 
away every sin, were it never so heinous, he embraced willingly all 
whatever the Egyptian told him."f 

Lardner says this is a false and absurd story; and to make it appear 
to be so, he renders the text of Zosimus, without supplying it, as usual, 
at the bottom of his page, as if it had run, that " Constantine being 
conscious to himself of those bad actions, and also of the breach of 
oaths,! and being told by the priests of his old religion, that there was 
no kind of purgation sufficient to expiate such enormities, he began to 
hearken to a Spaniard, named JEgyptius, then at Court, who assured 
him that the Christian doctrine contained a promise of the pardon of all 
manner of sin." 

I suspect Dr. Lardner's copy of Zosimus of a mendacious substitution 
of the words which he renders "a Spaniard named JEgyptius, then at 
Court" instead of those acknowledged in the independent and hostile 
quotation of Socrates, that "A* met an Egyptian coming out of Iberia" 
in order to keep in the back ground, as much as possible the denoue- 
ment of historical fact, that Christianity is really not of Jewish, but of 

* Socrates, lib. 3, c. 40, 41. When we hear language of this sort, we may 
be sure that somebody has been telling the truth. Consult that holy blackguard, 
the Reverend Dr. J. P. S., and his Rejoinder, for the character of the Author. 
Billingsgate surrenders the honours of the fish-market to the transcendant 
ruffianism of the college. 

f Ibid. lib. 3, c. 40 — See also the original text of Zosimus to this effect, 
given in my "Syntagma," p. 112. 

J The holy emperor had bound himself by the most solemn oaths to protect 
Licinius, but slew him notwithstanding. He had the example of the man aftw 
God's own heart lo justify this peccadillo, 1 Kings, ih 8, 0. 



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J34 FATHERS OP THE FOURTH CBNT0RY. 

Egyptian derivation.* As for its absurdity, they should not throw 
stones who live in houses of glass. 

Sozomen has a whole chapter on purpose to confute such accounts of 
Constantines conversion ; in which he admits (which one would think 
were admission enough), that the emperor made some such application 
to a Pagan priest, of the name of Sofateb, who had been his faithful 
friend ; but that Sopater refused to administer spiritual consolation, 
asserting that the purity of the gods admitted of no compromise with 
crimes like his. Whereupon, Constantine applied to the bishops* of 
Christianity, " who promised him that by repentance and baptism they 
would cleanse him from all sin ;"t taking into the reckoning, we must 
suppose, the sin (if a sin they held it to be) of murdering poor Sopater, 
the Pagan priest ; whom, upon his conversion to the Christian faith, 
Constantine took care to have put to death. 

It is from the arguments which his best friends and most zealous 
advocates advance in his favour, and the pitiful chicane with which they 
feebly attempt to conflict with the facts which his enemies, or rather the 
impartial documents of history, allege against him, that we gather a true 
knowledge of the character of the first Christian emperor. 

Thus the learned Christian historian Pagi, with equal humanity and 
orthodoxy, affects to repel every accusation that the tongue of slander 
might object against this holy emperor : — " As for those few murders, 
if Eusebius had thought it worth his while to refer to them, he would 
perhaps, with Baronius himself, have said, that the young Licinius 
(his infant nephew), although the fact might not generally have been 
known, had most likely been an accomplice in the treason of his father. 
That as to the murder of his son, the emperor is rather to be considered 
as unfortunate than as criminal. And with respect to his putting his 
wife to death, he ought to be pronounced rather a just and righteous 
*udge. As for his numerous friends, whom Eutropius informs as he 
put to death one after another, we are bound to believe that they most 
of them deserved it, as they were found out to have abused the empe- 
ror's too great credulity, for the gratification of their own inordinate 
wickedness, and insatiable avarice : and such, no doubt, was that 
Sofater the philosopher, who was at last put to death upon the'accu 
aation of Adlabius, and that by the righteous dispensation of God, for 



• Compare with Chap. 29, The Sign of the Cross, in this Diecesis, p. 185. j 

t T«/T« ?vvi7i0T£p.»of lavTV. kou o-pocrmyi opxw xMraQpwnrus* Tporwu 
t«k uptvtn xad«p?*« aurof .— Zosimus. Aivpowurr* h ror fiaaiki* tn m 
mruyopwrUf ripiTvyiiv Etmtwwok, 0* fxtrama xeu favrurjxari vriTgorro, IIcit* 1 
at/rev apapTMt; xadaupu* —Sozomen, 



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FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 3Hb 

his havifig attempted to alienate the mind of Constantine from the true 
religion."* Dr. Lardner quotes this important passage in Ids notes, 
for the benefit of the learned reader, but gives no rendering into 
English of the most important clause in it: which I have here 
supplied. 

We have horrors on horrors in detail of martyrdoms in the cause of 
Christianity — here was a martyr in the cause of Paganism, of whom, 
as of millions whom Christians massacred, it was considered a suffi- 
ciently fair account, either with Lardner to think their cases utterly 
unworthy of notice, or with Pagi to assume that they had their throats 
cut and their property turned over to the faithful, by the just dispen- 
sations of God upon them for not being of the emperor's religion. 
One's heart smarts at the unfeeling exultation of Eusebius over the 
cold-blooded massacres of Pagans, who, he tells us, " as they formerly 
reposed an insolent vain hope in their false gods, so now, upon being 
executed and put to death according to their desert, they truly under- 
stood how great and admirable the God of Constantine was ."+ The 
war against Constantine he throughout assumes to be, and expressly 
calls, " The war against God"% 

* De cadibus autem si rationem in paiticulari reddere voluisset, dixisset 
forsitan cum ipso Baronio, Licinium juniorem ex sorore Constantia natum, etsi 
causa vulgo ignoraretur, verosirailitei tamen complicem patri suo fuisse : In 
Crispo filio, infelicem magis quam reum : In Fausta conjuge, etiam justum 
judicem appell&ndum : Numerosos amicos quos successive interfectos scribit 
Eutropius, lib. 10, credendum, plerosque id corameritos, quod nimia principis 
credulitate tandem deprehenderentur abusi ob suam exuberantem malitiam et 
insatiabilem cupidiatem. Qualis proculdubio fuit Sopatee ille philosophus, 
tandem Adlabio agente, interfectus, idque justa Dei dispensatione quia Con- 
stantinum conatus a vera religione abalienare. — Pagi, Ann. S24, n. 12, quoted 
by Lardner, vol. 4, p. 371. We cannot have this fact stated with too great 
precision. I therefore copy it as told again in another passage, which Dr. 
Lardner renders thus from Sozomen: "I. am not ignorant that the Gentiles 
are wont to say, that Constantine having put to death some of his relations, and 
particularly his son Crispus, and being sorry for what he had done, applied to 
Sopatsr the philosopher, and he answering that there w«re no expiations for 
such offences, the emperor then had recourse to the Christian bishops, who 
told him that by repentance and baptism, he might be cleansed from all sin : 
with which doctrine he was well pleased, whereupon he became a Christian. — 
Lardner, vol. 4, p. 400. It was never on the score of being a superior code 
of morality that Christianity could compete with Paganism. 

t In Vita Constantine, lib. 2, c. 18. 

J Ibid. 



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986 FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. 

IV.— The evidences of Christianity as they appeared to 
Cons tan tine. 

Nothing can be more relevant to our great investigation, than a 
view of the evidences of Christianity as presented to the mind of the 
royal convert. Without passing any judgment on his character, or 
'casting any reflections on Christianity, from a consideration of the 
motives which were likely to induce such a man to become its convert, 
we are to remember that Constantine was not a disciple merely, but 
also a preacher of the Christian religion ; and has left us the whole 
apparatus of argument, upon the strength of which he not only became 
a Christian himself, but which he held sufficient to convince the reason, 
and command the faith of all other persons. 

It is not possible that Christianity should ever have possessed 
evidence of any sort, to which Constantine could have been a 
stranger. 

It fells not within the measure of conceivable probabilities, that so 
elever a man as Constantine unquestionably was, setting himself in an 
assembly of all the distinguished Christian clergy of his age and empire, 
to deliver an oration expressly on the evidences of the Christian 
religion, should therein have omitted all reference to its greatest and 
grandest testimonies, and have dwelt only on such as were equivocal 
or nugatory: neither will conceit itself endure the supposition, that 
Christianity can, since his day, have acquired any increase of evidence, 
so that it should be possible for us of later times to have other and 
better reasons for believing it than our forefathers had, or that that 
which was less certain at first, should become more certain afterwards. 

An attempt to give the substance of so egregious, a rhapsody o* 
mystical jargon as his oration to the clergy, would be only less egre- 
gious than the rhapsody itself. Let the reader suppose himself to have 
got through the ten first sections of it ; and here begins the eleventh of 

Constantine 9 * Oration to the Clergy. 

" But I intend to prosecute the eternal decree and purpose of God, 
concerning the restoration of man's corrupted life, not ignorantly, as 
many do, neither trusting to opinion or conjecture. For, as the Father 
is the cause of the Son, so the Son is begotten of that cause who had 
existence before all things, as we have demonstrated. But how did 
he descend to men on earth ? This was out of his own determinate 
will, because, as the prophets had foretold, he had a general care oc 
all men. For needs must the Workman have a care of his work. 
But when he came into the world, by assuming a bodily presence, and 



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FATHERS OF TOE FOURTH CENTURA *p 

was to stay and converse some time on earth, for *0 /the work of man's 
salvation required, he found a way of birth different from the common 
birth of men, for there was a conception without a .marriage, a birth 
without a ....... ; while a virgin was the mother of God. The 

divine-essence, which before was only intelligible, was now become 
comprehensible: and incorporeal divinity was now united unto a mate- 
rial body. He was like the dove which flew out of Noah's ark,, and 
rested at length on a virgin's bosom.* After his birth, the wonderful 
wisdom and providence of God protected him even from his cradle* 
The river Jordan was honoured with his baptism ;t be had the royal 
unction besides ; by his doctrine and divine power he wrought miracles, 
and healed incurable diseases. Chap. 12. We give thee all possible 
thanks, O Christ, our God and Savionr, the wisdom of the Father. 
Chap. 15. Moreover, we certainly know the Son of God became a 
master to instruct the wise in the doctrine of salvation, and to invite 
all men to virtue ; that he called unto .him honest industrious men, and 
instructed them in modesty of life, and that he .taught them faith and 
; ustice, which are repugnant to the envy of their adversary the devil, 
who desireth to ensnare and deceive the ignorant. He also forbiddeth 
lordship and dominion,! and showeth that he came to help the meek 
and humble. This is heavenly and divine wisdom, that we should 
rather suffer injury than. do any, and, when necessary, we should rather 
receive loss than do another any wrong :§ for, seeing it is a great fault 
to do any injury,] not he that suffers it, but he that doeth the injury 
shall receive the greatest punishment^ This, in my opinion, is the 
firm basis of faith.' 9 

Chap. 18. "Here we must needs mention a certain testimony of 
Christ's divinity, fetched from those who were aliens and strangers 
from the faith. For those who contumeliously detract from him, if 
they will give credence to their own testimonies, may sufficiently 
understand thereby that he is both God and the Son of God. For the 

* I sincerely admire the dove's taste, and envy him his roost : but where did 
he find the virgin, when every body was drowned? or where did Constantine 
find the story ? 

t Query : Was he baptized to wash away his sins, or for what ? 

X Compare this with the titles and honours which Constantine himself arro- 
gated at that very time : and see unother proof that from first to last, il was 
never understood that the moral precepts of Christ were so much as intended 
to be obeyed ; nobody sets them so much at defiance as the most lesions be- 
lievers themselves. 

(Rise! fl Rise!! 

1" Rise, ghosts of Fausla, Crispus, and licintus 111 

43 So 



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33S FATHERS OP THE FOURTH CRNTURT 

Erythraean Sibyl, who lived in the sixth age after the flood, .being a 
priestess of Apollo, did yet, by the power of divine inspiration, pro- 
phesy of future matters that were to come to pass concerning God ; 
and, by the first letters, which is called an acrostic, declared the history 
of Jesus. The acrostic is, Jesus Chris fas, Dei Ftlius, Senator, Crux.* 
And these things came into the Virgin's mind by inspiration, and by 
way of prophecy. And therefore I esteem her happy whom our Saviour 
did choose to be a prophetess, to devine and foretel of his providence 
towards us/' 

The royal preacher proceeds in the next chapter to reprove the 
incredulity of those who doubt the genuineness of this sublime 
doggerel 

"But the truth of the matter," he continues, "doth manifestly 
appear ; for our writers have with great study so accurately compared 
the times, that none can suspect that this poem was made and came 
forth after Christ's coming ; and, therefore, they are convicted of false- 
hood who blaze abroad that these verses were not made by the 
Sibyl." 

And then follows Chapter 20, entitled "Other verses of Virgil 
concerning Christ, in which under certain vails fas poets use) this 

* It is thus accurately versified into English by the translator Wye Salton- 
stall: 

I n that time, when the great Judge shall come, 
£ arth shall sweat; the Eternal King, from's throne, 
S hall judge the world, and all that in it be, 
U nrighteous men and righteous, shall God see ' 
S eated on high with saints eternall-EE 

C ompassed, which in the last age have been. 
H ence shall the earth grow desolate again, 
R egardless statues and gold shall be held vain, 
I n greedy flames shall burn earth, seas, and skies, 
S tand up again dead bodies shall, and rise, 
T hat they may see all these with their eyes. 

C leansing the faithful in twelve fountains, VU 

R eign shall for ever unto eternitee, 

Very God that he is, and our Saviour too, 

X hrist that did suffer for us— and 1 hope that'll oaf 



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PATHOS QF THE POURT.i CENTURY. 339 

knotty mystery is set .forth. ; w and to be sure* the fourth Bucolic of 
Virgil, commencing 

Sicelides raus* paulo majora canamus 

(than which, the power of imagination could hardly jump further away 
from all relation to any thing of the kind), is quoted as the ultimate 
proof and main evidence of the Christian revelation. 



The amount of evidence, then, for the Christian religion in the fourth 
century, as far as evidence influenced the mind of the most illustrious 
convert it could ever boast, was the Sibylline verses, now on all hands 
admitted to be a Christian forgery; and a mystical interpretation 
arbitrarily put on an eclogue of Virgil, which neither the poet himself, 
nor any rational man on earth, ever dreamed of charging with such an 
application. There is not one of all the thousand-and-one Arabian 
Nights' Entertainments which, with an equal license of application, 
might not be shown to be as relevant and prophetical as this. 

Surely we had a right to expect from Constantine, that if evidence 
to the historical facts on which the gospel rests its claims, existed, he 
was the man who should have been acquainted with it ; — this was the 
occasion on which it should have been brought forward. Nor are we 
to be put off with the old fox's apology — that the grapes are sour, 
and that Constantino's testimony would have reflected no honour on 
Christianity. Who, of all the human race, could better have known 
the fact, or with greater propriety have given a certificate of it, had it 
been true that such a person as Jesus Christ had suffered an ignomini- 
ous death, under one of his predecessors in the Roman empire ? Who 
should have adduced the admission of Josephus, the testimony of 
Phlegon, the passage of Tacitus, nor these alone, if in his day they had 
existed, but ten thousand times their evidence, or (what would have 
been equipollent to that) should have produced the sign manual of 
Pontius Pilate, or the register itself of persons put to death under his 
viceroyalty, but Constantine, into whose, hands they must have lineally 
descended ? Constantino could not have been ignorant of their exist* 
ence if any man on earth had known of it, and could not have failed of 
adducing them, had he known of them himself: and if he had known 
and adduced them, he would have silenced the objections of millions 
of infidels: and, if infidelity be a damnable sin, would have saved 
millions from damnation ? Surely it was any thing rather than such a 
palpable forgery as the Sibylline verses, or such infatuate irrelevancy as 
& heathen eclogue, that we should have a right to see assigned as a 



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34* FATHMS Of THE FOURtH CSKTUBT. 

demonstration of the truth of the Christian religion I We wanted not 
allegories, nor mystifications, bat the plain matter-of-fact evidence, 
which might have excused a man to himself as a rational being, in 
believing. Where is that evidence ? Where the plausibility, the seem- 
ing, the shadow of an historical fact?— in heaven P— in bell?— in 
Brobdignag. Tis nowhere upon earth. Then rail at ns, ye conse- 
crated successors of Constantine! Persecute us, ye lawyers 1 Denounce 
us, ye hypocrites ! Curse us, all ye priests ! Rail, rant, and roar for 
it : — but never talk of evidence ! 



EtrsfiBius, a J). 315. 

There is no name in Ecclesiastical History of equal importance with 
this : no character with whom it so vitally concerns- every rational 
man to be thoroughly acquainted, no individual of the whole human 
race, on whose single responsibility ever hung so vast a weight of con 
sequence. If Eusebius be to be numbered with wise and good men, 
the strength of his wisdom, and the sincerity of his virtue, are sterling 
gold to the value of the Evidences of the Christian Religion. If Aebe 
found wanting, just in so much wanting must be the credibility of so 
much of the Christian evidence as rests upon his testimony, and that 
is, all but the all of it, " Without Eusebius," says the learned Tille- 
mont, " we should scarce have bad any knowledge of the history of the 
first ages of Christianity, or of the authors who wrote in that time, AH 
the Greek authors of the fourth century, who undertook to write the 
history of the church, have begun where Eusebius ended, as having 
nothing considerable to add to his labours." 

He was born, as is generally thought, at Csesarea in Palestine, 
about the year 270. We have no account of bis parents, or who were 
his instructors in early life ; nor is there any thing certainly known of 
his family and relations. He is called Pamphilus, only in honour of 
his very particular friendship for the martyr of that name, who had 
been a presbyter of the church in which Eusebius succeeded Agassius 
as bishop, in the year 315. The name Eusebius is one of that order 
which learned men have generally claimed to themselves, and been 
allowed to hold, either as expressive of the characters they sustained, or 
to conceal the meanness and obscurity of their parentage, such as our 
Pelagius, for Morgan ; Calvin, for Chauvin ; Melancthon, for Black 
Earth, &c. Eusebius literally signifies, one who is correctly reli- 
gious. 

There have been several of this name, but none of the same age and 



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FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY. $41 

character, with whom he is so likely to be confounded as his contem- 
porary and brother by courtesy, Eusebius, bishop of Nicomedia,— who 
calls our Eusebius his Lord. They were entire friends, and so intimate 
that they were both of the same opinion upon the Aria* controversy, as 
agitated in the couneil of Nice, which, was held in the year 325, and in 
which our Eusebius bore a most distinguished part. 

Eusebius Pamphilus was Bishop of Ccesarea, from the year 815 
to the year 340, in whieh he died, in the 70th year of his age, thus 
playing his great part in life, chiefly under the reigns of Constantino 
the Great and his son Constantius. He is the great ecclesiastical 
historian, with whom alone it is our concern to be especially acquainted. 
Te little Eusebiuses, hide your diminished heads ! 

His works bear testimony to a character of very great ability, of 
extraordinary diligence, and of an esprit-du-corps, or high-church 
passion, that absorbed every other feeling, and would have induced him, 
as it did many others, to sacrifice not only life but truth itself, to the 
paramount claims of the church's interests. St. Jerome gives a cata- 
logue of his works, which consisted of 15 Books of Evangelical 
Preparation— as preparatives for such as were to learn the doctrine 
of the gospel. (So far was this great historian from apprehending that 
there was sufficient historical evidence to command any man's rational 
conviction, without a preparatory discipline— a breaking-in of the 
obstinacy of reason and common sense, and " bringing down every high 
thought to the obedience of faith ;") — then followed his 20 books of 
Evangelical Demonstration, in which he proveth and confirmeth the 
doctrine of the New Testament, with a confutation of the devil ; then 
five books on the Divine Apparition ;* ten books of Ecclesiastical 
History, by far the most important and valuable, as it is also the most 
defective of his writings — a general recital of Chronical Canons with 
an Epitome of the same; a treatise on the Discrepancy of the Evan* 
gelists. 

Ten books of commentary upon the prophet Isaiah. 

A commentary on the 150 Psalms. 

Three books on the Life of his friend Pamphilus 

Six books in Defence ofOrigen. 

Thirty books against Porphyry. 

* Or Theophany, that is, " the shining forth of God;" a conceit, which conceit 
itself could hardly have dreamed of, as a definition of the life and adventures 
of the son of a frail girl of Nazareth— the hero of the gimlet, " O, it out-Herods 
Herod 1" All other divines endeavour to subdue our reason,— the assertert of 
the humanity of Christ insult it. 



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34* FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CBNTURT. 

Eight books against Hierocles. 

Four books of the Life of Constantine. 

Books on Martyrology. 

On Fatal Destiny. 

Three books against Marcellus, who had been bishop of Ancyra in 
Galatia, and deposed upon suspicion of heresy about a.d. 320. 

One book on Topics, and perhaps others innumerable, which nobody 
reads, nor would be the wiser for reading. His style, however, is in 
general good, and his Greek, very fluent and easy reading. 

He has been accused by some of criminal time-serving, and of sacri- 
ficing to the gods to subserve some temporal purpose of his own, but 
not, indeed, on any satisfactory evidence of the fact. His " Life of 
Constantine, however, is an incontrovertible demonstration against him ; 
that he never let a regard for truth stand in his way to preferment, that 
he was a consummate sycophant, and that no man better understood, or 
more successfully practised, the courtly arts of standing well with the 
powers that be. 

Petavius places Eusebius among Arians, and the learned Cave allows 
that " there are many unwary and dangerous expressions in his writings. 
He subscribed the Nicene creed, as he would have subscribed any other, 
though contrary to his convictions :* and to the sense of his writings 
both before and after that Council.**t On which, Dr. Lardner affec- 
tedly remarks, that " it is grievous to think ; for better had it been that 
the bishops of that council had never met together, than that they should 
have tempted and prevailed upon a Christian bishop, or any one else, 
to prevaricate and act against conscience. " 

" This author was a witness of the sufferings of the Christians," says 
Dr. Lardner, " in the early part of his life, and afterwards saw the 
splendour of the Church, under the first Christian Emperor. Like 
most other great men, he has met with good report and ill report ; his 
learning, however, has been universally allowed." " It appears, (says 
Tillemont) from his works, that he had read all sorts of Greek authors, 
whether philosophers,, historians, or divines, of Egypt, Phcenieia, Asia, 
Europe, and Africa." " With a very extensive knowledge of literature, 
(continues Dr. Lardner), he seems to have had the agreeable accomplish- 
ments of a courtier. He was both a bishop and a man of the world ; 
a great author and a fine speaker. We plainly perceive from his writ- 
ings, that through the whole course of his life, he was studious and 

* Like our own Archdeacon Paley, " he cotdd not afford to have a conscience.* 1 
See his Life prefixed to his Evidences of Christianity. 

f Like our Archbishop Magee, " he might have believed it in the lump, with- 
out believing it in the particular. 1 ' — See his Evidence before the House of Lords. 



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FATHERS OF THE FOURTH CENTURY* 343 

diligent, insomuch that it is wonderful how he should have had leisure to 
write so many large and elaborate works of different kinds, beside the 
discharge of the duties of his function, and beside his attendance at 
Court, at Synods, and the solemnities of dedicating churches. He was 
acquainted with all the great and learned men of his time, and had ac- 
cess to the libraries of Jerusalem and Ceesarea ; which advantage he 
improved to the utmost. Some may wish that he had not joined with 
the Arian leaders in the hard treatment that was given to Eustatius, 
Bishop of Antioch, Athanasius of Alexandra, and Marcellus of Ancyra. 
But it should be considered, that Christian bishops in general, after the 
conversion of Constantine, seem to have thought, that they had a right 
to depose and banish all ecclesiastics who did not agree with them upon 
the points of divinity controverted at that time. Finally, though there 
may be some things exceptionable in his writings and conduct ; his 
zeal for the Christian religion, his affection for the martyrs, his grateful 
respect for his friend. Pamphilus, his diligence in collecting excellent 
materials, and in composing useful works for the benefit of mankind ; 
his caution and scrupulousness in not vouching for the truth* of Con- 
stantine's story of the apparition of the cross, as well as other things, 
fully satisfy me, notwithstanding what some may say, that he was a good 
as well as a great man."t 

Du Pin says that " Eusebius seems to have been very disinterested, 
very sincere, a great lover of peace, of truth, and religion. Though he 
had close alliances with the enemies of Athanasius, he appears not to 
have been his enemy ; nor to have had any great share in the quarrels of 
the bishops of that time. He was present at the councils where unjust 
things were transacted, but we do not discern that he showed signs of 
passion himself, or that he was the tool of other men's passions. He 
was not the author of new creeds — he only aimed to reconcile and re- 
unite parties. He did not abuse the interest he had with the emperor, 
to raise himself, nor to ruin his enemies, as did Eusebius of Nicomedia, 
but he improved it for the benefit of the church." Such is his character 
as drawn by his advocates and friends, a character unfortunately preg- 
nant with admissions of enough, and more than enough, to justify the 
charges of Baronius and others, sincere professors of the Christian faith, 
who have branded him as the great falsifier of ecclesiastical history, a 

* But surely this lying by proxy, is but a more sneakingtand cowardly way of 
lying: he knew that the falsehood was asserted, and profited by the false- 
hood. He lent his influence to it, and subscribed it with the consent of a crimi- 
nal silence. 

t Lardner, vol. 2, p. 363. 



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S44 FATHERS OP THE FOURTH CENTURY. 

wily sycophant, a consummate hypocrite, and a time-serving perse- 
cutor. 

Indeed, there ifi no fair evidence in any thing thai appears in iris writ- 
ings, or is known of his life, to support our wish, for the honour of 
human nature, to believe that he himself believed the Christian -religion. 
Had he done so, can we think that he would have deemed it necessary 
to promote that cause by forgery and imposture, by triekery and false- 
hood, as lie has constantly endeavoured to do ? 

" He had a great zeal for the Christian religion," says Dr. JLardner, 
and so far, undoubtedly, he was in the right; nevertheless he should not 
have attempted to support it by weak and false arguments. " It is 
wonderful," he adds, " that Eusebius should think PhUo's Thevapentse 
were Christians, and that their ancient writings should be out gospels 
and epistles. 

" Agbarus's letter to our Saviour, and our Saviour's letter to Agharos, 
copied at length in our author's Ecclesiastical History, are much sus- 
pected by many learned men not to be genuine* 

" If the testimony to Jesus as the Christ, had been from the begin- 
ning in Josephus's works, it is strange It should never have been 
quoted by ancient apologists for Christianity, and now in the beginning 
of the fourth century, be thought so important as to be quoted by our 
author in two of his works still remaining," That is to. say, sure!) 
Eusebius forged it himself I for the purpose of quoting his own forgery. 
There was never an advocate of the Christian evidences yet, whose con- 
science would have opposed any hesitation to such services, in so good a 
cause. 

" There is a work ascribed to Porphyry, quoted by Eusebius in his 
Preparation and Demonstration. If that work is not genuine (and I 
think it is not) H was a forgery of his own time, and the quoting it as he 
does, will be reckoned an instance of want of care or skill, or of candour 
and impartiality." 

" Where Josephus saw that Agrippa, casting his eyes upwards, saw 
an owl sitting upon a cord over his head ; our ecclesiastical historian 
says, he saw an an*el. I know not what good apology can be made for 
this." 

So delicately does Dr. Lardner glance at the peccadilloes of the great 
Christian historian : to say nothing of his entirely passing over the 
altogether Popish character of the religion he professed; the masses 
said for the soul of Constantine, his own fulsome panegyric on that great 
monster of iniquity, and the innumerable instances of deceit and cun- 
ning which will be found by every shrewd student of his writings. 

Eusebius held that Jesus Christ created the substance of thefiojj 



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FATHERS OF TBB FOURTH CENTO RV, «6 

Ghost, and ridiculously, or rather perhaps sarcastically, hints that 
miracles were still in vogue, even in his own time, only they were little 
ones. * 

His adducing, however, of the authority of the elders of the churches 
of Lyons and Vienne, without directly pledging his own authority, to 
obtain belief from whoever would believe the stories of the martyrdoms 
of the saints of those churches, and of some whose bodies were actually 
found alive and uninjured in the stomachs of the wild beasts who had 
devoured them,* is proof enough of his art in supplying miracles adapted 
to the meanest capacity, And a grand specimen of that peculiarly 
ecclesiastical finesse, in which Dr. Lardner himself is an exquisite 
proficient ; the contriving to reap the. effect of falsehood, without incur- 
ring its responsibilities, lying by proxy, and pushing what they never 
believed themselves into credence, as far as credence would follow with- 
out committing themselves in any sufficiently honest expression to enable 
a man to lay the blame of it directly at their own door. Thus also, the 
grave and solemn Tertullian assures us of a fact which he and all the 
orthodox of his time credited, that the body of a Christian which had 
been some time buried, moved itself to one side of the grave to make 
room for another corpse which was going to be laid by tf.f We have 
no less credible accounts of a holy dog, who used to slide along on his 
haunches to receive the sacrament, and to watch over the church-yard 
like a guardian angel, and when he saw any other dogs about to ease 
themselves upon the graves of the saints, he would instantly set on then^ 
and teach them to go further. 

He was actually canonized by the Bishdp of Borne, and many 
splendid and glorious miracles were wrought at the shrine of the Holy 
Dog, St Towzer.J 

Saint Austin, in like manner, preached the Gospel to whole nations 
of men and women, who he assures us had no heads. — Query, could he 
mean any thing else than that, in believing the gospel, men and women 
have no need of heads ? 

In a word, 

Eusebius, like many other great men, was drawn into the frightful 
vortex of superstition, and had no alternative but to whirl round in ft 

• Lardner's Credibility, vol. 4, p. 91. 

t Tertullian De An., c. 51, quoted bv Evanson, p. 15. \ 

% Hie relics of this truly Christian Dog are preserved in the parish church of 

San Andres, near Vailadolid, to this day. His soul is with Jesus. We may 

laugh at this in England ; but he would be a brave man who laughed at it in Spain. 

— See Catholic Miracles, p. 43. * 

44 2x 



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HERETICS. 



or fink. lake thousands of his order at this day, he both preached and 
wrote what he never believed himself, nor could believe. It is only 
when Religion shall be no more, that Hypocrisy shall be no more : as it 
is, there is bat one rule in theological arithmetic— 4. e. the greater saint 
the greater liar ! 



CHAPTER XLIV. 



TESTIMONY OF ffEBETICS. 



The only definition that will express the distinction between ortho- 
doxy and heresy, is, that the orthodox party are those who have the 
upper hand, the heretics are those who have the misfortune to get ousted. 
All Dissenters are heretics. Should aoy order of those of the present 
day come to possess themselves of the ascendancy, (which God avert) 
how absurd or monstrous soever their religious tenets might be, they 
would forthwith become perfectly orthodox ; and the church, in its turn, 
losing hold of the great primum-mobile of divinity (its revenues and 
honours) might carry with it the selfsame doctrines which it now holds, 
into a state of the most deplorable and damnable heresy. " The learned 
have reckoned upwards of ninety different heresies which arose within 
the first three centuries ;" nor does it appear that even the most early 
and primitive preachers of Christianity were able to keep the telling of 
the Christian story in their own hands, or to provide any sort of security 
for having it told in the same way. 

St. Paul accuses St. Peter of wilfully corrupting the gospel of Christ,* 
and (whatever we may feel ourselves bound to think of himself) makes 
no mincing of the matter, in telling us, that the other apostles were 
"false apostles, deceitful workers, dogs, and liars, and thai they 
preached^ Christ, out of envy and strife* 9 ] 

In the epistles ascribed to John, and which are admitted to have oeen 
written some time before either of our gospels, it appears that there 
were persons professing the Christian faith, who considered that a belief 
that such a person as Jesus Christ had ever existed, was no part of that 
frith j and that he was denied to have had any real existence as a man 

* Gabtians ii. 14 ; Acts xv. 39 ; Philippians iii. 2 ; Phil. i. 15, &c. 
f 1 John iv. 3. 



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HERETICS. *4/ 

or to hare come in the flesh, at a time when, if that fact could have been 
established, there would have been no occasion to make a virtue of any 
man's faith : the matter could at once have been settled for ever on a 
basis of certainty that would tave prevented the power of the mind to 
conceive a doubt on the subject. 

The very earliest Christian writings that have come down to us, are 
of a controversial character, and written in attempted refutation of 
heresies. These heresies must therefore have been of so much earlier 
date and prior prevalence ; they could not have been considered of suf- 
ficient consequence to have called (as they seem to have done) for the 
entire devotion and enthusiastic seal of the orthodox party to extirpate, 
or keep them under, if they had not acquired deep root, and become of 
serious notoriety — an inference which leads directly to the conclusion 
that they were of anterior origination to any date that has hitherto been 
ascribed to the gospel history. When the simple fact of the existence 
of such a man as Jesus Christ is questioned, it is usual for the modern 
advocates of Christianity to shelter themselves from all contemplation of 
the historical difficulties of the case, by assuming his existence to be 
incontrovertible, and that nothing short of idiotcy of understanding, or 
an intention to irritate and annoy, rather than either to seek or to com- 
municate information, could prompt any man to moot a doubt on the 
subject ; nor is it in the power of language to exceed the airs of insolence 
and domination which even our Unitarian theologers assume, to cloak 
over their inability to give satisfaction on this, the simplest and prime 
position of the case, by taking it for granted, forsooth, that none but 
reckless desperates, or downright fools,* could ever have held the human 
existence of Christ as problematical. We might, say they, as well affect 
to deny the existence of such an individual as Alexander the Great, or 
of Napoleon Bonaparte, and so set at defiance the evidence of all facts 
but such aa our senses have attested, — it being quite forgotten that the 
existence of Alexander and Napoleon was not miraculous, and that 
there never was on earth one other real personage whose existence as a 
real personage was denied and disclaimed even as soon as ever it was 
asserted, as was the case with respect to the assumed personality of 
Christ. But the only common character that runs through the whole 
body of heretical evidence, is that they one and all, from first to last, 
deny the existence of Jesus Christ as a man, and professing their faith 
in him as a God and Saviour, yet uniformly and consistently hold the 

* Let any man only read the Preface to the Rev. J. R. Beard's Historical 
Evidences of Christianity Unassailable, and imagine, if he can, how either God or 
Pope could ever have thundered with more audacious Godhead. 



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348 HERETICS. 

whole story of his life and actions to be allegorical. " The greatest part 
of the Gnostics (taking that name as the most general one for all the 
heretics of the three centuries) denied that Christ was clothed with a 
rial body, or that he suffered really*"* 

Tertullian speaks of only two heresies* that existed in the time of tbe 
Apostles, t. s. the Docbtjs, so called from the Greek Amotk opinion f 
suspicion, appearance merely, as expressive of their opinion that Christ 
had existed in appearance only, and not in reality ; and the Ebionites, 
so called from the Hebrew word abionim, in expression of their poverty, 
ignorance, and vulgarity ,f " Docetism," says Dr. Lardner, " seems to 
have derived its origin from the Platonic philosophy. For the followers 
of this opinion were principally among the higher classes of men, and 
were chiefly those who had been converted from heathenism to Christi- 
4oity."f As far, then, as such a question admits of proof, this is absolute 
proof that -no such a person as Jesus Christ ever existed, — " Blow winds 
and crack your cheeks P 



HEBETIC8 WHO DENIED CHRIST'S HUMANITY. 

Within the immediate year of the alleged crucifixion of Christ, or 
sooner than any other account of the matter could have been known, it 
was publicly taught, that instead of having been miraculously born, and 
having passed through the : impotence of infancy, boyhood, and adol- 
escence, he had descended on the banks of the Jordan in the form of per- 
fect manhood, that he had imposed on the senses of his enemies, and of 
his disciples, and that the ministers of Pilate had wasted their impotent 
rage on an airy phan tom.§ Cotelerius has a strong passage to thia effect, 
that " it would be as it were to deny that the sun shines at mid-day, to 
question the fact that this was really the first way in which the gospel 
story was related :" " While the apostles were yet on earth, nay, while 
the blood of Christ was still recent ori Mount Calvary, the body of 
Christ was asserted to be a mere phantasm.")) 

The heretics in regular succession from Simon Magus, so considerable 
a hero in the Acts of the Apostles, downwards*— as Menander, Maxcion, 

* Moshelm, toU 1, p. 136. 

i Quoted in Lardner, vol.. 4, p. ,512. J Ibid, p. (fed. 

§ Syntagma, p. 101. 

|| Apo^elb adhuc in saccule* superstitious apud Judseam Christi sanguine 
recente, et Phantasm a corpus Domini asserebatur. — CoteL Patre$ Jpottoi. torn. 
2, p. 24. 



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HERETICS. U9 

Valentine, JfesUides, Bardesanesy Cerdon, Manes, Leucius, Faustus,— 
vehemently denied the humanity of Christ 



CXBDON 

Though Dr. Lardner thinks the testimony of Cerdon of sufficient re- 
spectability to assist the claims of the New Testament, and concludes 
that Cerdon was a Christian, and received the books of the New Testa- 
ment as other Christians did ; yet, taking that book as his guide, he 
established his sect at Rome, where he taught (the New Testament in 
his understanding of it containing nothing to the contrary), that " our 
Saviour Jesus Christ was not born of a virgin, nor did appear at all in 
the flesh, nor had he descended from heaven ; but that he was seen by 
men only putatwety, that is, they fancied they saw him, but did not 
see him in reality, for he was only a §hadow t and seemed to suffer, but 
in reality did not suffer at alL" 



KABCIOV OF POHTU8, A. D. 127. 

The successor of Cerdon, and himself the son of the orthodox bishop 
of that city, whose opinions according to the testimony of his adversary 
Epiphanies, prevailed, and in his own day still subsisted throughout 
Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, and Syria, was so far from believing 
that our Saviour was born of a virgin, that he did not allow that he 
had ever been t>orn at all. He maintained that the Son of God took 
the exterior form of a man, and appeared as a man, but without being 
born, or gradually growing up to the full stature of a man: he had 
showed himself at once in Galilee, completely equipped for his divine 
mission, and that he immediately assumed the character of a Saviour, 

Dr. Lardner instructs us that the Marcionites (the followers of the 
opinions of Marcion) believed the miracles of Christ ; they moreover 
allowed the truth of the miraculous earthquake and darkness at the 
crucifixion ; they acknowledged his having had twelve disciples, and 
that one of them was a* traitor. " It is evident that these persons were 
in general strictly virtuous, that they dreaded sin as the greatest evil, 
and had such a real regard for Christ as to undergo martyrdom rather 
than offer incense to idols." (605.) This was at least so' much more 
than Origen, witn all his orthodoxy, would do. If we deny these men 
to have been Christians, to whom shall we confine that designation ? It 
cannot be disputed that the Gospel according to St. Hark does admit of 
a Marcionite reading; nor did these primitive dissenters entirely rtgcpt 



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880 HERETICS. 

Lake's Gospel, though in their copy of that Gospel the verse 39 of its 
24th chapter* contained the little particle not, where our copies have 
omitted it— an omission which, at the first blush, seems to make a tri- 
fling difference. Tertullian, in his way, is indecently eloquent in describ- 
ing the tenets which the Marcionites held with respect to the person of 
Christ, t 



LEUCIUS, A. D. 143, 

Or Lucian, for he had many names — Lucanus, Lucius, Leicius, Lenti- 
tius, Leontius, Seleucius, Charnius, Leonides, and even Nexocharides, 
which mean all one and the same person, was a distinguished Christian 
Docete, and one of the most eminent forgers of sacred legends of the 
second century. He is charged with being the forger of the Gospel of 
Nicodemus, and was the author of the forged Acts or journeyings of the 
Apostles. In the commentaries which go under the name of Clement 
of Alexandria, a passage from this work is quoted, which says that the 
Apostle John, " attempting to touch the body of Christ, perceived no 
hardness of the flesh, and met with no resistance from it, but thrust his 
hand into the inner part." A sense which, whatever sense or nonsense 
there be in it, is at least kept in countenance by St. Luke's Gospel (if 
this Lucius and our Luke are not one and the same person), where Luke 
tells us of Christ's vanishing away, which no body could do (Chap. 24, 
v. 31),$ and then, without any entrie, standing again (d, la vampire) in 
the midst of them (v. 36.). Say we nothing of the corroboration from 
St. John's Gospel, where he bids Thomas thrust his hand into his side, 
which no body could have endured (John xx. 27.), but refused to let the 
lady Magdalene so much as touch him, which no body could have had 
any objection to. (v. 17.) We have no reason, however, to think this 
Leucius any the sorrier a Christian because Pope Gelasius has con* 



* Luke xxiv. 39. " Handle me and see ; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones at 
ye see me have" The Marcionite reading was, — Sec. " a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones, as ye see that I have not."— Viikatfytmrt /*c xou titrc or* r»tvp» rape*, 

XCUOOT I<X OtOC f£H, k%$<*><; IfXl SwpuTM wx txwrm. 

f Non norem mens i urn cruciatu deliberates, non subita dolorum concussione 
per corporis cloacam effusus in terram, nee molestus uberibus diu infans, vix puer 
tarde homo sed de coelo expositus, semel grandis, semel totus, statim Christus, 
Spiritus et Virtus et Debus tantum. — Adv. Maroon, 601. 

t Kan ewTOj a$att»$ rymro at* canm* 



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HERETICS. 3M 

demned him and his writings, decliiring that all his writings are apciehry- 
phal, and he himself a disciple of the devil. 



AFBLLES, A. D. 160, 

That is, about twenty years, after the establishment of Marcion, whose 
disciple he had been, made a schism from the Marcionite church ; and 
thus we trace by what degrees the Docetan doctrines were brought into 
a nearer conformity to the present type of Christianity, and what was 
originally romance began to assume a certain resemblance to history. 

Apelles renounced the doctrine of Docetism, and maintained that 
Christ was not an appearance only, but had flesh really, though npt de- 
rived from the Virgin Mary, for as he descended from the supercelestial 
places to this earth, he collected to himself a body out of the four ele- 
ments. Having thus formed to himself a corporeity, he really appeared 
in this world, and taught men the knowledge of heavenly things. Apel- 
les taught that Jesus was really crucified, and afterwards showed that 
very flesh in which he suffered, to his disciples ; but that afterwards, as 
he ascended, he returned the body which he had borrowed, back again 
to the elements, and so completed his anabasis, and sat down at the 
right hand of God, without any body at all. According to this Father, 
however, Christ was not born, nor was his body like ours ; for though 
it was real and solid, it consisted of aerial and ethereal particles, not 
of such gross matter as our frail bodies are composed of. — It was a sort 
of amber. 

paust us, 

The most learned and intelligent Manichean, whom we have else- 
where quoted as directly charging the orthodox party with having egre- 
giously falsified the gospels,* (a charge which the orthodox only answer, 
by retorting it again upon the heretics,) in his interrogative style, 
thus expresses himself — " +Do you receive the gospel? (ask ye) 
Undoubtedly I do! Why* then, you also admit that Christ was 
born ? Not so ; for it by no means follows, that in believing the 
Gospel, I should therefore believe that Christ was born. Do you 

* See pp. 61 and 106. in this Diegesis. 

f Accipis evangelium '? Et maxime. Proinde ergo et natum accipis Christum? 
Non ita est. Neque enim sequitur ut si evangelium accipio, idcirco et natum 
accipiam Christum. Ergo non putas eum ex Maria Virgine esse ? Manes dixit, 
Absit ut Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum per naturalia pudenda mulieris 
descendisse confitear. — Lardner sto, vol, 4, p. 20. 



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3» HERETICS. 

not then think that he was of the Virgin Mary ? Manet hath said* 
' Far be it that I should ever own that our Lord Jesus Christ * * 

• ••••» &c 



HERETICS WHO DENIED CHRIST'S DlYIMTTr. 

Down the whole stream of time, to the present day, there has been a 
long succession of heretics, whose tenets were the diametrical reverse of 
those of the more early Christians. From Artemon, Theodotus, Sabel- 
lius, Paul of Samosata, Marcellus, Photinus, &c, we inherit the curse 
of the Unitarian schism, which denies the divinity as strenuously as 
the earlier Fathers had denied the humanity of Christ The orthodox 
have devised a scheme that seems to have been intended to bring both 
parties together, or to enable them to turn their arms either against the 
one faction or the other, as political interest might prompt, or need re- 
quire ; and the union of the two natures — perfect God and perfect 
man— is now the orthodox divinity. It' is, I suppose, upon inference 
from these difficulties, which never could have been started with respect 
to any being who had really ever existed ; or which, being started, could 
have been settled at once and for ever, by the production of any one 
municipal certificate, or independent historical testimony, that Mr. 
Volney, Mr. Carlile, and other persons who do not exactly deserve to 
be considered as idiots, have ventured to deny that any such person as 
Jesus ever existed. 

It is of essential consequence to be borne in view, that in order of 



Those who denied the humanity of Christ were the first class of pro- 
fessing Christians, and not only first in order of time, but in dignity 
of character, in intelligence, and in moral influence. 

Those who denied the divinity, were the second, and in every sense 
a less philosophical and less important body. 

The junction of the two in the mongrel scheme of modern orthodoxy, 
seems to have been completed in the articles of peace drawn up for the 
Council of Nice, a. d. 325. 

The deniers of the humanity of Christ, or, in a word, professing 
Christians, who denied that any such a man as Jesus Christ ever existed 
at all, but who took the name Jesus Christ to signify only an abstrac- 
tion, or prosopopseia, the principle of Reason personified ; and who 
understood the whole gospel story to be a sublime allegory, or emble- 
matical exhibition of the sufferings and persecutions which the divins 
principle of reason may be supposed to undergo, ere it could establish 



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HERETICS, 35» 

its heavenly kingdom over the understandings and affections of men ;— 
these were the first, and (it is no dishonour to Christianity to pronounce 
them) the best and most rational Christians. Many such fell victims 
to the sincerity of their faith, jnot, indeed, as is monstrously pretended, 
by the persecuting genius of Paganism, but by the remorseless savage- 
ness of the infatuated idiots, who, having once been interested in the 
allegorical fiction, like our country louts or Unitarian stolids of the 
present day, would needs have it that it must all be true, and were 
ready to tear any one to pieces who attempted to deprive them -of the 
agreeable delusion. 

The allegorical sense may, by any unsophisticated mind, be still 
traced ; and, by changing the name Jesus throughout for that of Reason, 
the New Testament will acquire a character of comparative dignity and 
consistency, which without that clue to the interpretation of it, would 
be sought for in vain. 



HERETICS WHO DENIED CHRIST'S CRUCIFIXION. 

Not only among the Apostles, but by those who were called Apostles, 
themselves, was the reality of the crucifixion steadily denied. In the 
gospel of the Apostle Barnabas, of which there is extant an Italian 
translation written in 1470, or in 1480, which Toland* himself saw, 
and which was sold by Cramer to Prince Eugene, it is explicitly 
asserted, that " Jesus Christ was not crucified, but that he was taken 
up into the third heaven by the ministry of four angels, Gabriel, 
Michael, Raphael, and Uriel ; that he should not die till the very end of 
the world, and that it was Judas Iscariot who was crucified in his 



This account of the matter entirely squares with the account which 
we have of the bitter and unappeasable quarrel which took place be- 
tween Paul and Barnabas, in the Acts of the Apostles, t without any 
satisfactory accounts of the ground of that quarrel ; as well as with the 
feet that Paul seems always to have preferred imposing his gospel on 
th* ignorant and credulous vulgar, and lays such a significant emphasis 
on the distinction that he preached "Jesus Christ, and Him crucified, 9 , 

* Toland's Nanrenus, Letter I. Chap. 5, p. %7. 
a! Act f * v * 39 * " And **• contention was so sharp between Hem, thai they 
<*parted asunder one from the other.' 9 We never hear of their being reconciled 
•gfcn—butthat is not extraordinary— no beast m nature is so implacable as an 
wended saint! 

45. jT 

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354 HERETICS 

as if in marked opposition to bis former patron, Barnabas, who preached 
Jesus Christ, but not crucified* 

The Basilidiant, in the very beginning of Christianity, in like manner 
denied that Christ was crucified, and asserted that it was Simon of 
Cyrene, who was crucified in his place : which account of the matter 
stood its ground from the first to the seventh century, and was the 
form in which Christianity presented itself to the mind of Mahomet, 
who, after instructing us how the Virgin Mary conceived by smelling 
a rose, tells us, that " the Jews devised a stratagem against him, but 
C od devised a stratagem against them, and God is the best deviser Oj 
stratagems" " The malice of his enemies aspersed bis reputation, and 
conspired against his life, but their intention only was guilty ; a phan- 
tom or a criminal was substituted on the cross, and the innocent Jesus 
was translated into the seventh heaven.* 9 

£o much for the evidence of the Crucifixion of Christ ! 



HERETICS WHO DENIED CHRIST'S BESUBBECTION. 

In like manner, we have a long list of sincerely-professing Christians, 
i own from the earliest times, who denied the resurrection of Christ, 

Theodoret informs us of Cerinthus, who was contemporary with the 
Apostle John and his followers, that he held and taught that Christt 
suffered and was crucified, but that he did not rise from the tomb : but 
that he will rise when there shall be a general resurrection. Philaster 
Fays of him J that he taught that men should be circumcised, and observe 
the Sabbath, and that Christ was not ye* risen from the dead, only be 
announces that he will rise. 

Had the Christ of the Gospels been really the founder of the Chris- 
tian religion, certainly it would be incumbent on all Christians to be 
< ircumcised as he was, and to observe that Jewish law only, which he 
observed, and which he was so far from abrogating, that he declared 
tlat "heaven and earth should pass away ere one jot or one tittle of 
flat law" should be dispensed with. — Matt. v. 18. Our modern reli- 
gionists are Paulites : The Jews alone are the followers of the example 
and religion of Jesus, 

* See the Koran, C. hi. v. 53, and C. iv. v. 156, of Maracci's edition. 

t Xfurrot nrviropdtfeu kou wravfioa&ai : /uww iitywytfiai : ptXkut if anaraff- 
Sot ©raw 91 xadoXou yttnrai yixpwv avcurrao-.f . 

X Docet autem circumcidt et sabbatizare et Christum nondum resuirextsse a 
mortuis, sed resurrecturum annunciat. — Lardner, vol. 4, p. 308. 



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HERETICS. 3ft 



The Cerinthians, 
The Valentinians, 
The Markosians, 
The Cerdonians, 
The Marcionites, 
The Bardisanitea, 
The Origenists, 
The Hierakites, 
The Manichees, 



Stand in the long and never in- 
terrupted succession of Chris- 
tians who denied the Resur- 
rection of Christ. 



I have heard of one of the most popular and distinguished preachers 
among the Unitarians, who, upon being homely pressed with the que* 
tion as to where he believed the body of Jesus Christ might at this 
moment be, pointed with his finger to the turf, and looked vastly droll, 
in intimation of his concurrence in that orthodox belief, so sublimely 
expressed in the epitaphs we stumble on in Deptford church-yard; 
against which, I believe, there never was an infidel yet, who could bring 
a rational objection, 

" Go home, dear friends, dry up your tears, 
Here we shall lie, till Christ appears, 
And when he comes, we hope to have 
A joyful rising from the grave." 

As the whole amount of the internal evidence for the alleged fact ot 
the Gospel, it may then be fairly stated, that in contravention of the 
clear understanding of the mystical nature of the whole My thos, which 
those who bear the brand of heresy have given us — while a thousand 
expressions in the writings of the orthodox themselves confirm that 
understanding, not so much as any two continuous sentences can be 
adduced from any pen that wrote within a hundred years of the sup- 
posed death and resurrection of Christ, which are such as any writer 
whatever would have written, had he himself believed that such events 
had really occurred. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 



CHAPTER XLV. 

THE WHOLE OF THE EZTXBNAL EVIDENCE OF THE CHBX8TIAH 
RELIGION. 

Paxjey, in his Hone Paulinse, with that consummate ingenuity which 
might be expected from a clergyman who could not afford to have a 
conscience, has contrived to substitute a very plausible and indeed con- 
vincing evidence of the existence and character of Paul of Tarsus, for a 
presumptive evidence of the truth of Christianity. The instances of 
evidently-undesigned coincidence between the Epistles of Paul, and the 
history of him contained in the Acts of the Apostles, are indeed irre- 
fragable : and make out the conclusion to the satisfaction of every fair 
inquirer, that neither those epistles, nor that part of the Acts of the 
Apostles, are supposititious. The hero of the one is unquestionably the 
epistoler of the other; both writings are therefore genuine to the full 
extent of every thing that they purport to be : neither are the Epistles 
forged, nor is the history, as far as it relates to St. Paul, other than a 
faithful and a fair account of a person who really existed, and acted the 
part therein ascribed to him. 



TESTIMONY OF LUCIAN. 

Lucian, in his dialogue entitled Philopatris, speaks of a Galilean with 
a bald forehead and a long nose, who was carried (or rather pretended 
that he had been carried) to the third heaven, and speaks of his hearers 
*s a set of tatterdemalions, almost naked, with fierce looks, and the gait 
of madmen, who moan and make contortions ; swearing by the son who 
was begotten by the father; predicting a thousand misfortunes to the 
empire, and cursing the Emperor. I have far greater pleasure in quot- 
ing the unexceptionable 

TESTIMONY OF LONOINUS. 

Longinus Dionysius Cassius, who had been Secretary to Zenobia 
Queen of Palmyra, and died a. d. 273, in his enumeration of the most 
distinguished characters of Greece ; after naming Demosthenes, Lysias, 
JEschines, Aristides, and others, concludes, " and add to these Paul of 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. Stf 

Tarsus, whom I consider to be the first setter-forth of an unproved doc- 
trine."* 

This testimony is, indeed, very late in time, and extends a very little 
way ; but let it avail as much as it may avail, there can be no doubt 
(whether Christianity be received or rejected) that Paul was a most dis* 
tinguished and conspicuous metaphysician, who lived and wrote about 
the time usually assigned, and that those Epistles which go under his 
name in the New Testament are in good faith (and even with less 
alteration than many other writings of equal antiquity have undergone), 
such as he either penned or dictated. Should any sincere and upright 
believer in the Christian religion, instead of reviling and insulting the 
author of this work, or going about to increase and extend the horrors 
of that unjust imprisonment, of which this work has been the chief 
solace —set himself ably and conscientiously to the business of showing 
that from an admission of the genuineness and authenticity of St Paul's 
Epistles, and of the reality of the character and part ascribed to him in** 
the Acts of the Apostles (always excepting the miraculous), the existence 
of Jesus Christ as a man, and the general credibility of the gospel 
history, would follow ; he would deserve well of the Christian community, 
and of all men who wish to see truth triumphant over prejudice, igno- 
rance, and error. 



THE TESTIMONY OF FHLEGON. 

This has long ago been given up as an egregious monkish forgery, no 
longer tenable ; nor indeed is it ever adduced by our more modern and 
rational divines. Mr. Gibbon, in his caustic and expressive style, says, 
11 the celebrated passage of Phlegon is now wisely abandoned ;"f but as 
he has not quoted it, and I find it standing its ground in the celebrated 
Dr. Clarke's Evidences of Natural and Revealed Religion, I have thought 
it worthy of transcription in this place. This it is, 

"Jin the fourth year of the two hundred and second Olympiad, there 
was an eclipse of the sun greater than any ever known before; and it 
was night at the sixth hour of the day, so that even the stars appeared, 

• npos tovtovc TlovXof o Toprivf otrnot, xou rpwrw fngu rpckrr»/*nw hy/iar*; 
OMMrodftKTou. — Eur. Magazine. 

+ Decline and Fall, chap, 15, ad ealcem* 

t Tvraprai X itm to; itaxoffwmf iivripoE? o&v/urMtiof, tytttro ixXuovk utav 
MtyKrn rm fywpwpin* vponpoy, nm w% up* turn vnc Sfupotf lywiro «jti aot 
ocTifgf umtpwrn ffltmw, xou ow/btof. — *. r. A. 



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)58 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

and there was a great earthquake in Bythinia, that overthrew several 
houses in Nice." 



THE FASSAGE OF MACROBIUS. 

u When Augustus had heard that among the children in Syria, whom 
Herod, King of the Jews, had ordered to he slain under two years of 
age, his own son was also killed, he remarked that it was better to be 
Herod's hog than his son."* 

There is no occasion to he prolix in comment upon a passage, which, 
though urged by Dr. Clarke, and some of our earlier Christian evidence 
writers, is regarded generally by Christians themselves as somewhat 
below the line of respectability. It is not adduced by Eusebius, who 
is ridiculously diffuse on the slaughter of the children in Bethlehem, t 
and who would have made much of it, had it been known to him. The 
probability is, that Macrobius might have recorded, such a saying of 
Augustus, with respect to some unnatural father, or even of Herod 
himself, whose cruelty to his own family was but little inferior to that of 
the evangelical Constantine ; and some of the Monkish Radiurg&4 or 
dexterously-forging scribes, might have thought it a good exploit, to fit 
it with the occasion. 

The whole passage of St. Matthew's Gospel, which relates the story 
of the slaughter of the innocents, is marked in the improved version of 
the New Testament, as of doubtful authority ; and is included among 
some of the facts, of which the Unitarian editors of that version, say in 
their note, that they have a fabulous appearance, 

I cannot possibly treat this delicate subject with greater delicacy, 
than by possessing my readers of the judgment which a learned, intelli- 
gent, and sincere believer in the Christian religion, has passed upon it. 

" Josephus and the Roman historians give us particular accounts of 
the character of this Jewish king, who received his sovereign authority 
from the Roman Emperor, and inform us of other acts of cruelty which 
ne was guilty of in his own family ; but of this infamous inhuman 
butchery, which to this day remains unparalleled in the annals of tyranny, 
they are entirely silent. Under such circumstances, if my eternal hap- 
piness depended upon it, I could not believe it true. But though I 

* Cum aodisset (Augustus) inter pueros quos in Syria, Herodes rex Judaeorum 
intra bi mat urn jussit internet, filium quoque ejus occisum, ait, " Melius est 
'Herod is porcum esse quam filium."— Macrobius, lib. 2, c. 4. — Clarke 353* 

t Eccles. Hist. lib. 1, c. 9. t P*Wpyo». 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE, 350 

readily exclaim with Horace, non ego* I cannot add, as be does, eredat 
Judatus Apella ;f for I am confident, there ia no Jew that reads this 
chapter, who does not laugh at the ignorant credulity of those professed 
bhristians,£ who receive such gross, palpable falsehoods for the inspired 
word of God, and lay the foundation of their religion upon such incredi- 
ble fictions as these."§ 



PUBLIUS LENTULUS. 

It was a known custom of government, that whatever of moment oe» 
eurred in any province of the empire, should be transmitted in due re- 
port from the provincial authorities to the knowledge of the Roman 
Emperor and the Senate. Of this, the correspondence of the younger 
Pliny and the emperor Trajan, as well as the natural and obvious 
necessity of the thing, is proof unquestionable. 

Upon the notoriety of this custom, and the self-evident inference, that 
it was impossible that the Procurator or representative of the Roman 
authority in Judea, should have omitted to make a report of the exist* 
ence and miracles of Jesus Christ ; a few years ago, the great libraries 
of England, France, Italy, and Germany, pretended to possess their 
several authentic copies of the epistle, in which Publius Lentulus, the 
supposed predecessor of Pontius Pilate in the province of Judea, was 
believed to have written to the Roman Senate a most particular descrip- 
tion of the person of Jesus Christ. || 

It was first found in the History of Christ, as written in Persic, by 
Jeremy or Hieronymus Xavier. 

In front of certain parchment manuscripts of the gospels, written 
three hundred and twenty-five years ago, preserved in the library at 
Jena, there is still preserved the following inscription ; 

" In the time of Octavius Caesar, Publius Lentulus, proconsul in the 

* Wot I! t Let the Jew Apelles believe ! 

t Surely this professed Christian had not the fear of Oakham before his eyes. 

§ Reverend Edward Evanson's Dissonance of the Gospels. Ed. Ipswich 1792, 
p. 126. 

|| All our pictures of the handsome Jew present the closest family likeness to 
the Indian Christina, and the Greek and Roman Apollo. Had the Jewish text 
been respected, he would rather have been exhibited as hideously ugly, " his 
visage was so marred more than any man, and his form more than the sons of men" 
—Isaiah Hi. 14. But this would have spoiled the ornaments of the church as 
well as of the theatre, and been fatal to the faith of the fiiir sex.— Who could have; 
believed in an ugly son of God 1 s 



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30* EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

parts of Judaea and (the territory) of Herod the King, ia said to hue 
written this epistle to the Roman Senators, which was afterwards found 
by Eutropius in the annals of the Romans. 1 '* This commentitioai 
epistle was formerly edited among orthodox writings, undex the title,— 

" Lentulus, Prefect of Jerusalem, to the senate and people of Rom* 
greeting: 

" fAt this time, there hath appeared, and still lives, a man endued 
with great powers, whose name is Jesus Christ. Men say that he if t 
mighty prophet ; his disciples call him the Son of God. He restores 
the dead to life, and heals the sick from all sorts of ailments and diseases. 
He is a man of stature, proportionally tall, and his cast of countenance 
has a certain severity in it, so full of effect, as to induce beholders to 
love, and yet still to fear him. His hair is of the colour of wine, as fir 
as to the bottom of his ears, without radiation, and straight : and from 
the lower part of his ears, it is curled, down to his shoulders, and bright, 
and hangs downwards from his shoulders : at the top of his head it is 
parted after the fashion of the Nazarenes. His forehead is smooth and 
clean, and his face without a pimple, adorned by a certain temperate 
redness ; his countenance gentlemanlike and agreeable, his nose and 
mouth nothing amiss ; bis beard thick, and divided into two bunches, of 
the same colour as his hair ; his eyes blue, and uncommonly bright. In 
reproving and rebuking he is formidable ; in teaching and exhorting, of 

* Temporibus Octaviani Cssaris, Publius Lentulus procos. in partibus Judas 
et Herodis Regis, Senatoribus Romania, hanc epistolam scripsisse fertur, qua 
postea ab Eutropio reperta est in annalibus Romanorum. — Fabricii Cod. Jpoc. 
torn. 1, p. 302. 

f Hoc tempore vir apparuit, et adhuc vivit vir preditus potentia magna, nomea 
ejus Jesus Cnristus : Homines eum prophetam potentem dicunt, diacipuli ejus, 
filium Dei vocant. Mortuos vivificat, et agros ab omnis generis wgritudinibus et 
morhis sanat. Vir est alta stature proportionate, et conspectus vultus ejus cum 
severitate, et plenus efficacia, ut spectatores amare eum possint et rursus timere. 
Pili capitis ejus, vinei coloris usque ad fundamentum aurium, sine radiation* et 
erecti, et afundamento aurium usque ad humeros contorti, ac lucidi, et ab humeri* 
deorsum pendentes, bifido vertice dispositt in morem Nazaneorum, Fiona plana 
et pure, facies ejus sine macula quam rubor quidam temperatus ornat. Aspectua 
ejus ingenuus et gratus. Nasus et os ejus nullo modo reprehensibilia, Barbs 
ejus multa, et colore pilorum capitis bifurcata : Oculi ejus caerutei et extreme 
lucidi. In reprehendendo et objurgando formidibilis, in docendo et exhortando 
blandae linguae et amabilis. Gratia miranda vultus, cum gravitate. Vel samel 
eum ridentem nemo vidit, sed flentem imo. Protracta statura corporis, means 
ejus recto, et erect*, brachia ejus delectabilia. In loquendo ponderans et gravis 
et parous loquela. Pulcherrimus vultu inter homines satos." 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 3*1 

a bland and agreeable tongue. He baa a wonderful grace of person 
united with seriousness. No one bath ever seen him smile, but weep- 
ing indeed they have. He hath a lengthened stature of body ; bis 
hands are straight and turned up, his arms are delectable ; in speaking, 
deliberate and slow, and sparing of his conversation ; — the most beauti- 
ful of countenance among the sons of men." 



THE VERONICA HANDKERCHIEF 

Would not deserve a consideration among the external evidences of 
Christianity, had it not been consecrated by the serious belief and 
earnest devotion of the largest body and most ancient sect of professed 
Christians. I make no remark on the story, but copy it as I find it, in 
a note of the editor on the text of Eusebius, where he relates the story 
of the correspondence of Christ and Abgarus.* "How that Abgarus, 
governor of Edessa, sent his letter unto Jesus, and withal a certain paiuter 
who might view him well, and bring unto him back again the lively 
picture of Jesus. But the painter not being able, for the glorious 
brightness of his gracious countenance, to look at him so steadily as to 
catch his likeness, our Saviour himself took a handkerchief and laid it 
on his divine and lovely face, and by wiping of his face, his picture be- 
came impressed on the handkerchief, that which he sent to Abgarus." 

This story the translator gives with severe censure from the historian 
Nicephorus, and perhaps it might deserve no less ; but that the impar- 
tial principle of this Diegesis forbids our treating any subject with 
levity or indifference, that has had power to engage the impassioned 
affections and earnest devotions of so numerous and respectable a portion 
of the Christian community. 

I copy from Blount's Philostratus, the annexed prayer, extracted from 
a Roman Catholic Liturgy, or manual of true piety : 

The Prayer to Veronica.* 

" Hail, Holy Face impressed on cloth ! Purge us from every spot of 
vice, and join us to the society of the blessed ; O blessed Figure !" 



* Euseb. Eccles. Hist. lib. 1, c. 14. 

f The name Veronica occurs in the Gospel of Nicodemus, as that of the lady 
who came behind Jesus and touched the hem of his garment. " Veronica, ists 
videter Uteris transpositis, nata ex vocabulis duobus, vera icon, Certum est, 
46. 2 z. 



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EXTERNAL ETIDENCB. 



THE TESTIMONY OF PILATE. 



In the same spirit of pious fraud, the Christian world had for ages 
been led to believe that the governor Pontius Pilate had sent to the 
emperor Tiberius, an account of the crucifixion of Christ ; which indeed, 
had such a person ever existed, and such an event taken place, it is 
next to impossible to conceive that he should not have done. But, 
alas, this testimony too has been swept away by the terrible besom of 
rational criticism; and is now left to lie with that of Lentulus, the 
Veronica handkerchief and the Sybilline Oracles, among the number 
of apocryphal cheats and impositions, which served the purpose of im- 
posing on generations which were more easily imposed on, but are re- 
jected with disdain and disgust by the increasing scepticism even of the 
most orthodox believers. 

Our immediate grandfathers were required to believe that Pontius 
Pilate informed the emperor of the unjust sentence of death which he 
had pronounced against an innocent, and as it appeared, a divine person ; 
and that without acquiring the merit of martyrdom, he exposed himself 
to the danger of it ; that Tiberius, who avowed his contempt for all 
religion, immediately conceived the design of placing the Jewish Mes- 
siah among the Gods of Rome ; that his servile senate ventured to dis- 
obey the commands of their master ; that Tiberius, instead of resenting 
their refusal, contented himself with protecting the Christians from the 
severity of the laws, many years before there were any laws in existence 
that could operate against them ; and lastly, that the memory of this 
extraordinary transaction was preserved in the most public and authentic 
records ; only those public and authentic records were never seen nor 
heard of by any of the persons to whose keeping they were entrusted, 
escaped the knowledge and research of the historians of Greece and 
Rome, and were only visible to the eyes of an African priest, who com- 
posed his apology one hundred and sixty years after the death of Tibe- 
rius. 

This testimony was first asserted by that brave assertor, Justin 
Martyr ; and as a snowball loses nothing by rolling, has received suc- 
cessive accretions in passing through the hands of Tertullian, Eusebios, 
Epiphanias, Chrysostom, and Orosius, till the warm handling of jnodern 
criticism has thawed away its unsubstantial fabric. 

The faith of that great father of pious frauds, Eusebius, upon this 

imaginem ipsam Christi, a scriptoribus non paucis, dici Veronicam/'— Fob. 
torn. 1, p, 252. 



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EXTERNA! EVIDENCE. *6S 

testimony, glowi into a fervour of assurance, which on any other subject 
would look like impudence. For after having assured us on the testi- 
mony of Tertullian, that Tiberius was so convinced by the account that 
Pilate had sent him, of the resurrection of Christ, that he threatens 
death to any person who should but bring an accusation against the 
Christians, when certainly there were no Christians ; and takes upon 
himself to inform us, that *" it was the divine providence, that by way 
of management, injected this thought into the emperor's mind, in order 
that the word of the gospel, having got a fair starting, might run 
throughout the whole world without opposition." 
| {The probability of the supposed occasion, was sure to bid for its 
ample supply of forgeries to be fastened upon it : — and as Ovid, having 
once got the names and circumstances of either real or imaginary per* 
sonages given as data, has invented imaginary speeches and epistles, 
suitable for such personages under such circumstances to have delivered, 
so Christian piety has supplied us with stores of epistles — not which 
Pilate wrote, but which he may be supposed to have written ; which for 
all the authentication required in matters of faith, is authentication 
enough. None but unbelievers would wish for more* 

John Albert Fabricius has, in his codex Apocryphus, noticed five ot 
these supposititious epistles-— of which one, called the Anaphora or 
Relation of Pilate to 'fiberius, is in Greek, and of considerable length, 
as intended, perhaps, if it had told, to pass for a gospel: the others, 
short and in Latin. I have given translations of them already in the 
22d number of the first volume of " The Lion." 

The Anaphora relates the miracles of Christ as recorded in the Gos- 
pels ; but supplies one or two additional, as credible as any of the rest. 
It does not exactly confirm the account which St. Matthew gives us, and 
which no Christian can doubt, that " the graves were opened, and many 
dead bodies of the taints which slept arose, and came out of the graves, 
and went into the holy city, and appeared unto many"\ But it entirely 
corroborates the story of the miraculous darkness at the crucifixion, 
which Mr. Gibbon handles with such galling sarcasm, merely because 
none of the contemporary historians and philosophers have condescended 
to notice it. 

" There was darkness over the whole earth, the son in the middle of 
the day being darkened, and the stars appearing, among whose lights 

* T«h ttpantt Tpwwotj xar' o.x<wo/u*»» tot* mnta xpof n» /3*XXo/ai*hc» *f «» 
OMrapa}o*»$rtff *px*$ ix m *wtyyt>Mi toyo? varrajgoo-i yn$ JtoJp*/*©*, lib. 2. c. 2. 
f Matthew xxvii. 52, 53. 



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*4 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

the moon appeared not, but as if turned to blood, it left its shining."* 
This addditioual circumstance of the moon being turned into blood, is 
no exaggeration, but is supported by the inspired testimony of St. 
Peter himself, who not only assures us that the moon was turned into 
blood, but that the whole universe, " Heaven above and Earth beneath, 
presented one vast exhibition of blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke" t 
But as there must always be as good reason to believe in miracles of 
light, as in miracles of darkness, and the resurrection of our Saviour 
was surely as worthy an occasion for a display of fire-works as his cru- 
cifixion, Pilate assured the Emperor Tiberius, that " early in the morn- 
ing of the first of the Sabbaths^, the resurrection of Christ was an- 
nounced by a display of the most astonishing and surprising feats of 
divine Omnipotence ever performed. At the third hour of the night, 
the sun broke forth into such splendour as was never before seen,§ and 
the heaven became enlightened seven times more than on any other day."| 
" And the light ceased not to shine all that night."^ But the best and 
sublimest part of the exhibition, as (with reverence be it spoken) exem- 
plifying the principle of poetical justice, and making a proper finale to 
the scene, was, that " an instantaneous chasm took place, and the earth 
opened and swallowed up all the unbelieving Jews ;** their temple and 
synagogues all vanished away ; and the next morning there was not so 
much as one of them left in all Jerusalem ;|f and the Roman soldiers 
who had kept the sepulchre ran stark-staring mad." jj So truly may we 
say, righteous art thou, O Lord, and just are thy judgments I 
A coincident Passage from Arnobius. 
Yet this language, ascribed to Pontius Pilate, is hardly less hyperboli- 
cal than that which the gravest and most rational of the Christian 
Fathers is constrained to use, when referring to the same subject, it 
would not bear the telling in the style of historical narrative. The 
calm and philosophical Lardner adduces this testimony of the no less 

* T» nXi* /xfcro* thj n/xipaj raoTio-dwo;, xou rm currtpm <p<x»mw, nr Mf Xsuxi- 
ioarit vx E$ommto * otXwh, to Qtyyoq w$ oupmwfyio'ct liiXurnr. — In Addcndis ad JRb- 
ttricii Codtc. Tom. 2. p. 97. * Acts ii. 19. 

§ ClQbn }f Tp»TiK vp«f vh WKtoi nAtos , m? ahworu woXka, tpadpnot*;. 
|| fore roy ifpavoy ynmrSou $vrayi*iyct trrotvXowm*, uffip *•*>*$ t«k h/aiooi^. 
IT Xlnaut StwxToctxutnt, t*x Mrawwro to $w$$a»»wF. — Ibid, 
** Taw Je micuon voXXo* tbatw .it t« x 0UT H Mri T *f Y** **TflMTi«$irrtf, «$ jta 
WftSnteu it*. 

ft Tnt ftvpiov to tX*jSo; to>» m^ouut rut ra xmra t» tnov Xvyofinw* 

l/La avtetyvyrt rut ttlouwu ttx vrwi\nQ§n tt avrn rn Iiptfo-oXnp. 

Xl O* h Tcptfrri; to pmpdot er arutrcu tt txrcwu ytyopew— «u t. X.— Ibid. 



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EXTERNAL "EVIDENCE. 36S 

philosophical and rational Arnobius, as evidence of the " uncommon 
darkness and other surprising events at the time of our Lord's passion 
and death."* That evidence requires us to believe that, "when he had 
put off his body, which he carried about in a little part of himself, after 
he suffered himself to be seen, and that it should be known of what size 
he was, all the elements of the world, terrified at the strangeness of 
what had happened, were put out of order ; the earth shook and trembled % 
the sea was completely poured out from its lowest bottom ; the whole 
atmosphere was rolled up into balls of darkness; the fiery orb of the $vn 
itself caught cold and shivered "f Our Christian Evidence writers are 
not able to adduce so much as a single author, friend or foe, Pagan or 
Christian, who has referred to these miraculous events in any way of 
which they themselves are not ashamed : not one who has related the 
story as if he believed it himself — not one, who, however in some pas- 
sages he may seem to speak as an historian, has not in others abun- 
dantly indicated a double sense, and shown his own secret understanding, 
not only that no such events ever happened, but that no such person as 
he of whom they are related, ever existed. 



JOSEPHUS, a. d. 93. 

T. Flavins Josephus, a Jewish Priest of the race of the Asmonean 
princes, was born at Jerusalem, taken prisoner by Vespasian in his wars, 
was present in his camp at the siege of Jerusalem, and wrote a work on 
the Jewish Antiquities, in twenty books, in the eighteenth of which, the 
third chapter, and third section, occurs the famous passage. This it 
is: — 

" X About that time appeared Jesus,, a wise man, if indeed it be right 
to speak of him as a man, for he was a performer of wonderful works, a 
teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew after 

* Lardner, vol. 2, p. 255: 

-f Exutus at corpore, quod in exigua sui circumferebat parte, postquam videri 
se passus ett, cujus esset aut magnitudinis sciri, novitate rerum exterrita mundi 
sunt elementa turbata, tellus mota contremuit, mare funditus refusum est : aer 
globis involutus est tenebrarum, igneus orbis solts tepefacto ardore diriguit.^- 
p. 32. 

X Tmreu h x*t» tovtot Toy wow Iwovf, croQof amp, uyt swipa avroy Xtywxp* * 
v y»p wapa^ofw* ipyw^ ieomms< MotoTLetXog avfyviruy rm n&om r'otXi&n hx*!**'*"* K>eu 
iroWovs utt k>v$cuws$ voXXoug it tw tXXtvixov vxnyctytro. O Xptoro? ovto* n»« ' Kaw 
avrov fyd»£» ran vpurtn *t%pw vap 9 mp», crruvpu f7nTmju.n*oToi TliX&rov, ovm 
tvavaarro o*yi to wpwrw ounw ayownjowTCf. E$arn yap cwrotft rpww */Aip«t 



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ft* EXTERNAfi EVIDENCE. 

him many of the Jews, as well as of the Gentiles. This same was the 
Christ. And though Pilate, by the judgment of the chief rulers among 
us, delivered him to be crucified, those who from the first had loved him 
fell not from him, for to them at least, he showed himself again alive on 
the third day : this, and ten thousand other wonderful things being 
what the holy prophets had foretold concerning him ; so that the Chris- 
tian people, who derive their name from him, have not yet ceased to 
exist. * 

. This passage was first quoted by Eusebius, who exults over it as if 
he had found a prodigious prize, — his exultation itself only serving to 
awaken suspicion in every critical mind, that the passage is bat another 
added to the long list of hie own most audacious forgeries, as he imme- 
diately subjoins — " Wherefore, since this Hebrew historian hath of old 
delivered these thiugs in his own writing, concerning our Saviour, what 
evasion can save those who invent arguments against these things, from 
standing convicted of downright impudence ?"* 

Yet for all this terrible defiance, the most unquestionably orthodox 
and best learned of the whole Christian world, have invented arguments 
against the validity of this passage, and have shown to absolute demon- 
stration the certainty that Josephus did not write this passage, and the 
probability that tusebius himself did. 

Mr. Gibbon, in his style of most significant double-throwing, has a 
note, admonishing us that " the passage concerning Jesus Christ was 
inserted into the text of Josephus, between the time of Origen and that 
of Eusebius, and may furnish us with an example of no vulgar forgery ."t 

No vulgar forgery indeed! The cool calculating wickedness, the reck- 
less impiety, the matchless impudence of this detected forgery, should 
indeed serve us as an example, how to trust and how to respect Christian 
testimony. Appended as this note is, to Mr* Gibbon's admission ot 
the respect due to the celebrated passage of Tacitus ; to what other 
sense can it be read, than as a hint that Mr. Gibbon had no mind to 
run first in the dangerous business of analysing the evidences of the 
Christian religion. That work must be left to Christians themselves, 
and as no Lardner has yet given us leave to take the same liberty with 

*X m * *°fo**?** • Ta» &ei*y itpoQnrvt vavr* n , tuu aXKx pvput r i pi avrov Stvpaovt, 
fipnxorw. Ewttiti tot, rut XptoTiayay, omto tou^i »w>ptto , p.itvt f cvx vrPurtn 

*favr* tw if at/Tow tfipcwat avyypa^ivq attxaSu rn taxnw ypa$n, ircpt . . 
. . . tou rornpof d/aw irapaJc^uxctTo;, t»j at crt \uvwu> avo$vyn toctj* 

owflucrvwro**, to*$ xara flrXa^»/*w«j i/TOfum/*»T*. — Sequenti commute. 
t Decline and Fall, chap, 16. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. W 

the patsage of Tacitus, " the most sceptical criticism * is obliged to re- 
spect its integrity. But it will fall in its turn. The fate of the Sibyl- 
line oracles ; of the forged admissions of Porphyry ; of the correspon- 
dence of Christ and Abgarus ; of the testimony of Phlegon ; of the 
letter to Tiberius; of the monument to Nero ; and of all other wicked 
devices that served the turn of imposing on the weakness of our fore- 
fathers, but will serve no longer ; awaits it. But a few years ago, and 
the author who had suggested a suspicion against the genuineness of the 
passage in Josephus, if he had happily escaped the horrors of a twelve* 
month's imprisonment, must at least have reckoned on having to sustain 
his full share of that abuse and hatred, with which the ignorant part of 
the world, which is unfortunately the greatest part, has generally rewarded 
the wisest and best men that ever lived in it. — But conviction has thus 
far forced itself upon the mind of the highest authority which Christians 
themselves can appeal to. Their own all-deciding Dr. Lardner has pro- 
nounced this passage to be an interpolation.* 

It is rejected also by Ittigius, Blondell, Le Clerc, Vandale, Bishop 
Warburton, and Tanaquil Faber. 

This latter author suspects that Eusebius himself was the author of 
the interpolation. What then must we think of Eusebius ? 

We have already seen that Eusebius is the sheet-anchor of reliance 
for all we know of the three first centuries of the Christian history. 
What then must we think of the three first centuries of the Christian 
history ? 

An author who would deliberately, and with his own hand, forge a 
testimony, and foist it into the writings of another who never did, and 
probably never would, have borne any such testimony ; and then quote 
his own known lie, as a proof of the truth of the Christian religion, and 
deal out his anathemas against all who should presume to question it— 
What would he not have forged ? What must not he himself have 
thought of the real nature and merits of a cause that needed to be sup- 
ported by such means ? It is curious to see, how, even after the defini- 
tive judgment of such high and confessedly orthodox authorities, we are 
still occasionally pestered with puerile or petulant last dying struggles 
to rescue this holy cheat from the sentence passed upon it — 

For faith, fanatic faith, once wedded fast 
To some dear falsehood, hugs it to the last. 

* I have published these arguments in my Forty-fourth, and also in my 
Ninetieth Oration, delivered before the Areopagus of the Christian Evidence 
Society, a few weeks before the commencement of the persecution which has 
afforded me leisure for these researches. 



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968 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

We are required to give a wholly different reading to the passage; to 
introduce imaginary parentheses, to make arbitrary omissions ; or egre» 
giously to mistranslate it : and thus, forsooth, to chisel it into a auppos- 
able possibility that Josephus might have written it 

Among the illustrious who have argued in this way, are Dr. Samuel 
Chandler, Dr. Nathaniel Foster, Mr. Henley, Mr. Bryant,* the Abbe de 
Voisin, and the Abbe Bullet. But the learned biographer of Lardner, 
in his Life, affixed to the quarto edition of his works, justly concludes, 
" Of what avail can it be to produce a testimony so doubtful in itself) 
and which some of the ablest advocates for the truth of the Gospel re- 
ject as an interpolation ?"f 

Dr. Lardner, after having thoroughly weighed all the arguments that 
could be adduced in its favour, strenuously defends his former opinion, 
that the passage is an interpolation. 

" It ought therefore to be for ever discarded from any place among 
the evidences of Christianity.*^ 

Dr. Lardner^ arguments against the passage, in his own words, are 
these : 

1. "I do not perceive that we at all want the suspected testimony to 
Jesus, which was never quoted by any of our Christian ancestors before 
£usebius.§ 

2. " Nor do I recollect that Josephus has any where mentioned the 
name or word Christ, in any of his works; except the testimony above 
mentioned, and the passage concerning James the Lord's brother.) | 

3. " It interrupts the narrative. 

4. " The language is quite Christian. 

5. " It is not quoted by Chrysostom,1T though he often refers to Jo- 
sephus, and could not have omitted quoting it, had it been then in the 
text. 

• 6. " It is not quoted by Photius, though he has three articles concern- 
ing Josephus. 

7. " Under the article Justus of Tiberias, this author (Photius) ex- 
pressly states that this historian (Josephus) being a Jew, has not taken 
the least notice of Christ 

8. " Neither Justin in his dialogue with Trypho the Jew, nor Clemens 

* In his Vindicie Flavian®, or a Vindication of the Testimony given by Jose- 
phus concerning our Saviour Jesus Christ, 1777. 

f Life of Dr. Lardner, by Dr. Kippis, p. 23. t Ibid. 23. 

§ His Answer to Dr. Chandler. || Ibid. 

% John, Bishop of Constantinople, who died ▲. d. 407, was called St. Chry- 
sostom, or Golden-mouthed, from the charms of his eloquence — the author of the 
last prayer in our Liturgy. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 869 

Alexandrinus, who made so many extracts from ancient authors, nor 
Origen against Celsus, have ever mentioned this testimony. 

9. " But on the contrary, in chapter xxxv. of the first book of that 
work, Origen openly affirms, that Josephus, who had mentioned John 
the Baptist, did not acknowledge Chriat." 

Dr. Lardner was anxious to have studied the defence set up for this 
passage by the Abb6 Bullet, which it seems never came to his hands. 
Of this defence, the chief arguments, in its own words, are — 

1. " That Josephus could not be ignorant that there had appeared in 
Judea, a charlatan, impostor, magician, or prophet, called Jesus, who 
had either performed wonders, or found the secret of persuading numbers 
to think so. 

2. " That he ought to have taken some notice of Jesus and his disci- 
ples ; and that 

3. " Because Suetonius and Tacitus have done so. 

4. " Because he has given an accurate account of all the impostors, 
or heads of parties, which arose amongst the Jews, from the empire of 
Augustus, to the ruin of Jerusalem. 

5. " Because the faith of history required that the existence of Jesus 
and his disciples should not be passed over in silence." And, 

Hence it is inferred that Josephus must have written this passage : 
and its not being found by any of the fathers before Eusebius, is to be 
accounted for, by the supposition (a pretty fair one) that Josephus him- 
self might have published two distinct editions of his works, inserting 
the passage in that edition, which came to the hand of Eusebius, but 
omitting it in all others. 

So struggles conquered sophistry against victorious truth. 

THE CEXEBBATED INSCRIPTION TO NEBO. 

As long as it would do— and criticism, afraid of losing its ears in the 
pillory, was constrained to whisper its discoveries in a corner, and vent 
its secret sentiment, in " curses not loud but deep," the evidences of the 
Christian religion boasted of the celebrated inscription on a public 
monument, erected at the time of the events it recorded, and still pre- 
served ; ascribing to the Emperor Nero the praise of having purged the 
province of Spain, in which it was situated, from those who in his times 
were labouring to inculcate a new superstition. 

So that here were all the marks of genuineness which Mr. Leslie in 

his Short and Easy Method with Deists, maintains to be sufficient to 

demonstrate an utter impossibility of imposture, in any document in 

which they are found concurring. This celebrated inscription is pub- 

47 3 a 



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byGoogk 



m EXTKBNAL EVIDENCE. 

ished by the learned Graterus in the first volume of his Inscriptions, p. 
238, is copied by Dr. Lardner from Grater,* and is by the learned Pagi, 
and other no less learned advocates of the evidences of the Christian 
religion, vindicated by arguments quite as learned, as ingenious, and as 
convincing, as any that have hitherto been adduced for the equally vera- 
cious testimonies of Josephus and Tacitus* The inscription is, 

HEBOHI CtAVDIO CAJE8ABI AVG PONT M4X 

OB FBOVUfC. &A1W>93B. 

XT HIS Q¥I NOVAM 

GENERI HTM. 8VPER 

STITIONEM INCVLCAB. 

PVKGATAM : 

i. e. l( To Claudius Caesar Nero Augustus Supreme Pontiff. In honour 
of the province having been purged from thieves, and from those who 
were endeavouring to teach the human race a new superstition." Subaudi 
—no better than thieves. I particularly wish to engage the reader's 
consideration to the homogeneity of character which this celebrated in- 
scription presents, to the still more celebrated passage of Tacitus. Ap- 
ply the one, an undoubted and unquestionable imposture, as a test of 
comparison to the other. 

The example of this passage demonstrates these corollaries : — 

1. That Christian forgers were very heedful to forge in keeping and 
character; and 

2. That in falsely representing what their enemies might have been 
supposed to have said of them, they suited the supposition to the 
person; and 

3. Rather overdid the representation for the better making sure 
against being suspected of being the authors of it themselves. 

4. Reviling and decrying themselves, in rather stronger terms than 
their enemies would have been likely to use against ttom, 

5. Thus they would contentedly be put on a level with thieves, and 
have their divine religion spoken of as something that ought to be 
purged out of society ; for the sake of making the testimony, which they 
had forged themselves, the more plausibly seem to be the testimony of 
their enemies. 

6. They holding it better to be spoken of in any way, than not to be 
spoken of at all ; and 

7. The specific object and aim of the forgery not being to represent 

* Lardner, voL 3, p, $09. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. $71 

what the character of Christianity was ; (which they could easily and 
at any time vindicate,) but 

8. To represent Christians and Christianity to have existed, when 
and where they did not exist ; to have had an extent of prevalence which 
it had not, and to have been of a degree of consequence and notoriety, 
as distinct from any of the multifarious modifications of the ancient 
Paganism, from which in fact and truth it was neither distinct, nor 
distinguishable. 

But this celebrated inscription has at length served its generation ; 
and it is now no longer indictable at common law to own the truth 
with respect to it, and pack it off with Josephus, Lentulus, Pilate, 
Phlegon, and all the whole noble army of martyrs. The distinguished 
Spanish historian, John de Ferreras, has escaped the inquisition, though 
he has ventured to own that he could not restrain himself from confess- 
ing,* " that it was even Cyriac of Ancona, who first foisted this bit of 
Christian evidence upon human credulity, and that it was from his brew- 
ing, that all the rest of 'em filled their vessels, but now happily any one 
may judge of it as he pleases." 

This allowance has emboldened Mr. Gibbon, who shows in a note 
that he has read the passage of Ferreras, to fling stones at this inscrip- 
tion, and to say, " it is a manifest and acknowledged forgery, contrived 
by that noted impostor, Cyriacus of Ancona, to flatter the pride and 
prejudices of the Spaniards."! He would have said as much of the 
passage of Tacitus, had he but found another John do Ferreras, to 
pioneer his way through the brake. 



SIMILAR INSCRIPTIONS* 

While the lie would do, nothing was so common or so natural as that 
it should be often overdone. The advocates fbr Christianity once 
meeting a little success in this way, would turn every mile-stone on the 
roads into a monument of Christianity. More than a copy would be 
more than the Worth of those to the emperors Dibcletian and Maximi- 
n ian. They rest, like that to Nero, on the faith of Baronius. 

• Je ne puis m'empecher d'observet que Cyriac d'Ancone fut le premier qui 
publia cette inscription, et*que c'est de lui que les autres Font tireNe ; maiscomtne 
la foi de cet ecrivain est suspecte* au jugement de tous les scavans, que d'ailleurs 




f Gibbon, chap 16. 



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873 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

1. DIOCUBT. JOVIU8. MAXIML HRRCULEI. CAE88. AUOCL AMPLIFI- 
CATO PER. ORIEHTJSM. ST. OCCID. IMPER. ROM. XT. NOMINE CHRI8- 
TIANORUM. DELETO. QUI. REMP. EVERTEBAKT ; and 

2. DIOCLETIAN CAE8. AUG. GALLERIO. IN ORIENTS ADOPT SUPER- 
STITIONS CHBISTL UBIQV. DELETA CULTU DEORUM PROPAGATO. 

Procopius mentions a Pheenician inscription upon two famous pillars 
near Tangiers, which was, 

Ufjiii; ta-fxtv ot Qvyoms omto vrpooww Inowrou \r&rm nov Nauru.— i. e. 

" ffe are they who fled from the face of Joshua the robber, the son 
of Nun: 9 

Thus have we not only forged writings, but pretended monuments 
that never existed, to record events that never happened. So reckless, 
so desperate, so audacious, are the tricks that have been resorted to, to 
give to Bible Skiotogy, an appearance of historical fact ; that is, to bring 
heaven and earth together. 



TACITUS, a. d. 107. 

We have investigated the claims of every document possessing a 
plausible claim to be investigated, which history has preserved of the 
transactions of the first century ; and not so much as one single pas- 
sage, purporting to have been written at any time within the first hun- 
dred years, can be produced from any independent authority whatever, 
to show the existence at or before that time of such a person as Jesus 
Christ, or of such a set of men as could be accounted to be his disciples. 

After the many forgeries and interpolations that have been detected 
in the texts of authors of high repute, nay the forging of whole books 
and palming them upon authors of established reputation, for the pur- 
pose of kidnapping their respectability into the service of Christianity, 
and fathering them with admissions which they never made nor in- 
tended ; it would have been next to a miracle, if the text of the great 
prince of historians had been suffered to come down to us unengrafted 
with a suitable recognition of the existence of Christ, and of Christians : 
or if, after the shrewdest talent and profoundest learning were engaged 
in the service, the important business of managing such an interpolation 
had been left to hands that could not have done it better than to fear 
detection from any ordinary powers of criticism. 

Eusebius had christianized Josephus ; it remained for shrewder mas- 
ters of criticism, and the more accomplished scholars and infidels of a 
later age to perform a similar regeneration upon the text of Tacitus. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 3T3 

This illustrious Roman inherits immortal renown as an historion, for 
his beautiful description of the manners of the ancient Germans, his 
Life of Agricola, his History of Rome, from the time of the Emperor 
Galba to the death of Domitian ; and lastly for his Annals, beginning 
at Tiberius, and terminating with the death of Nero. He was born 
about a. d. 6% and wrote his Annals very late in life, as nearly as pro- 
bable conjecture can bring us, about a. d. 107. 

The first publication of any part of the Annals of Tacitus, was by 
Johannes de Spire, at Venice, in the year 1468, — his imprint being 
made from a single manuscript, in his own power and possession onlv, 
and. purporting to have been written in the eighth century. From this 
manuscript, which none but the most learned would know of, none but 
the most curious would investigate, and none but the most inte- 
rested would transcribe, or be allowed to transcribe ; and that, too, 
in an age and country, when and where, to have suggested but a 
doubt against the authenticity of any document which the authorities 
had once chosen to adopt as evidence of Christianity, would have 
subjected the conscientious sceptic to the faggot ; from this, all other 
manuscripts and printed copies of the works of Tacitus are derived : 
and consequently in the forty-fourth section of the fifteenth book of these 
Annals, we have 

THE CELEBRATED PASSAGE, 

After a description of the terrible fire at Rome in the tenth of Nero, 
paid the sixty-fourth of our Lord, in which a large part of the city was 
consumed ; and an- account of the order g ven for rebuilding and beauti- 
fying it, and the methods used to appease the anger of the Gods : Taci- 
tus adds,* " But neither all the human help, nor the liberality of the 

* " Sed non ope humana, non largitioiribus Principis, aut Deum placamentis, 
decedebat infamia, quin jussura incendium erederetur. Erg5 abolendo rumori 
Nero subdidit reos, et quaesitissimiss pcenis adfecit, quos per flagitiaiuvisos, vulgus 
Christians appellabat. Auctor nommis ejus Christus, Tiberio imperitante, per 
procuratorem rontium Pilatura supplicio adfectus erat. Repressaque in praesens 
exitiabilis superstitio rursus erumpebat non modo per Judaeam, originem ejus 
mali, sed per Urbem etiam, quo cuncta undique atrocia, aut pudenda, confluunt, 
celebianturque. Igitur primo correpti qui fatebantur, deinde indicio eorum, 
multitudo ingens, haud perinde in crimine incendii, quam odio humani generis, 
convicti sunt. Et pereuntibus addita ludibria, ut ferarum tergis contecti, laniatu 
canum interirent, aut crucibus affixi, aut flammandi, atque ubi defeeisset dies, in 
usum-nocturni luminis urerentur. Hortos suos ei spectaculo Nero obtulerat, et 
Circense ludicrum edebat, habitu aurigse permixtus plebi, vel curriculo insistens. 
Unde quamquam adversus sontes et novissima exempla meritos, miseratio orie- 
batur, tamquam non utilitate publiea, sed in sevitiam unius absuraerentur." 



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Stt EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

emperor, nor all the atonements presented to the Gods, availed to abate 
the infamy he lay under of having ordered the city to be set on fire. To 
suppress, therefore, this common rumour, Nero procured others to be 
accussed, and inflicted exquisite punishments upon those people who 
were held in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly known 
by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from 
Christus, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to death as a criminal 
by the procurator Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, though 
checked for awhile, broke out again, and spread, not onlyover Judba, the 
source of this evil, but reached the city also : whither flow from all 
quarters all things vile and shameful, and where they find shelter and 
encouragement At first, they only were apprehended who confessed 
themselves of that s^ct ; afterwards, a vast multitude discovered bj 
them ; all which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning 
the city, as for their enmity to mankind. Their executions were so 
contrived as to expose them to derision and contempt. Some were 
covered over with the skins of wild beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs ; 
some were crucified : others, having been daubed over with combustible 
materials, were set up as lights in the night-time, and thus burned to 
death. Nero made use of his own gardens as a theatre on this occasion, 
and also exhibited the diversions of the Circus, sometimes standing in 
the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer ; at other times 
driving a chariot himself; till at length these men, though really crimi- 
nal and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated as 
people who were destroyed, not out of regard to the public welfare, but 
only to gratify the cruelty of one man." 



I consider this celebrated passage to be a forgery or interpolation 
upon the text of Tacitus, from no disposition, I am sure, to give offence 
to those who may have as good reasons, and probably better, for esteem- 
ing it to be unquestionably genuine, from no wish to deduct from 
Christianity one tittle or iota of its fair or probable evidence, but from 
a consideration solely of the facts of the case, which I here subjoin; 
and which, if they shall have less weight in the judgment of the reader 
than of the author; the reader will reap the advantage of holding the 
opposite conclusion, not only in concurrence with the decision of the 
wisest and best men in the world, but on that surer ground of satisfac- 
tion with which every conviction is held, after men have been so faithful 
to themselves as to weigh the objections that can be alleged against it 
' The facts of the case are these — 

1. This passage, which would have served the purpose of Christian 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 37& 

• 
quotation better than any other in all the writings of Tacitus, or of any 
Pagan writer whatever, is not quoted by any of the Christian Fathers. 

2. It is not quoted by Tertullian, though he had read and largely 
quotes the works of Tacitus; 

3. And though his argument immediately called for the use of this 
quotation with so loud a voice,* that his omission of it, if it had really 
existed, amounts to a violent improbability. 

4. This Father has spoken of Tacitus in a way that it is absolutely 
impossible that he should have spoken of him, had his writings contained 
such a passaged 

5. It is not quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, who set himself entirely 
to the work of adducing and bringing together all the admissions and 
recognitions which Pagan authors had made of the existence of Christ or 
Christians before his time. 

6. It has been no where stumbled on by the laborious and all-seek- 
ing Eusebius, who could by no- possibility have missed of it, and whom 
it would have saved from the labour and infamy of forging the passage 
of Josephus ; of adducing the correspondence of Christ and Abgarus, 
and the Sibylline verses ; of forging a divine revelation from the God 
Apollo, in attestation of Christ's ascension into heaven i and inumer- 
able other his pious and holy cheats. 

7. There is no vestige nor trace of its existence any where in the 
world before the 15th century. 

8. It rests then entirely upon the fidelity of a single individual t 

9. And he, having the ability, the opportunity, and the strongest 
possible incitement of interest to induce him to introduce the interpola- 
tion. 

10. The passage itself, though unquestionably the work of a master 
and entitled to be pronounced the chef d'eeuvre of the art, betrays the 
penchant of that delight in blood and in descriptions of bloody horrors, 
as peculiarly characteristic of the Christian disposition, as it was ab- 
horrent to the mild and gentle mind and highly cultivated taste of Taci- 
tus. 

*In his celebrated Apology, Tertullian is so hot upon the scent of this passage, 
that his missing it, had it been in existence, is almost miraculous. In Chapter 5 
of this Apology, he says, " Consult your histories, there you will find that Nero 
was the first to draw the bloody and imperial sword against this sect then rising at 
Rome." Yet even here, he stumbles not on this famous passage. 

f After other quotations from the writings of Tacitus, Tertullian continues his 
argument, "And indeed that same Cornelius Tacitus, that mott pr&ing of all 
Han, in the same history relates, ' At enim Cornelius Tacitus sane iile mendacio- 
rum loquacissimus in eaxLhist. ref. &c*?' Ctirt Kortkolt,*p. 272. 



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376 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

11. It bears a character of exaggeration, and trenches on the laws of 
rational probability, which the writings of Tacitus are rarely found to 
do. 

12. It may be met and overthrown by the concussion of directly con- 
flicting evidence of equal weight of challenge; a shock to which no 
statements of Tacitus besides are liable. 

13. It is not conceivable that Nero, who, with all his crimes, was at 
least not safe in the commission of crime ; and paid at last the forfeit 
of his life, not to private revenge, but to public justice, for less heinous 
enormities ; should have been so ludibund in cruelty, and wanton m 
wickedness, as this passage would represent him. 

14. It is not conceivable, that such good and innocent people as the 
primitive Christians must be supposed to be, should have provoked so 
£reat a degree of hostility, or that they should not sufficiently have en- 
deared themselves to their fellow -citizens, to prevent the possibility of 
their being so treated. 

15. It is not conceivable, that so just a man as Tacitus unquestionably 
Vas, could have spoken of the professors of a purer religion than the 
world before had seen, as really criminal, and deserving exemplary 
punishment. 

16. The whole account is falsified by the text of the New Testament* 
in which Nero is spoken of as the Minister of God for good ; and the 
Christians have the assurance of God himself, that so long as they were 
followers of that which was good, there was none that would harm them 
—See I. Peter iii. 13. 

17. It is falsified by the Apology of Tertullian, and the far more re- 
spectable testimony of Melito, Bishop of Sardis, who explicitly states 
that the Christians, up to his time, the third century, had never been 
victims of persecution : and that it was in provinces lying beyond the 
boundaries of the Roman Empire, and not in Judea, that Christianity 
originated. See their testimonies in this Dikqesis. 

18. Not a disposition to reject Christianity, but an eagerness and 
promptness to run after and embrace it, has in all ages been the consti- 
tutional cacoethes of the human mind. 

19. Tacitus has in no other part of his writings made the least allu- 
sion to Christ or Christians. 

20. The use of this passage as a part of the Evidences of the Chris- 
tian Religion, is absolutely modern. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. &7 

SUETONIUS, A. D. 110. 

C. Suetonius Tranquillus, A. d. 110, a Roman historian, in his life of 
Claudius, who reigned from a. d. 41 to 54 ; says, that " he drove the 
Jews, who, at the suggestion of Krestus, were constantly rioting, out of 
Rome.* Oorosius, a Christian writer of the fifth century, who quotes 
the passage, does not pretend to know whether it was the Christians or 
Jews who were thus expelled. Notwithstanding the absurdity of the 
supposition of this Chrestus being Christ, and of Christ heading riots in 
Rome, this passage has served its generation as Christian Evidence. Dr. 
Lardner, however, admits that " learned men are not satisfied that this 
relates to the Christians." 

2. In his life of Nero, Suetonius says, that " The Christians,-)- a race 
of men of a new and villanous, wicked/ or magical superstition, were 
visited with punishment." I hope it may not offend them, to hope that 
neither does this relate to Christians* 

3. In his life of Vespasian, he says, " There had been for a long time 
all over the East, a notion firmly believed, that it was in the fates (in the 
decrees or books of the fates) that at that time, some which came out of 
Judea should obtain the Empire of the world." 

This is as far aa Paley, Doddridge, and other sophistical Christian 
Evidence manufacturers, find it convenient to quote the passage. The 
finishing would spoil their use of it. This it is : 

" By the event it appeared that that prediction related to the Roman 
Emperor. The Jews, applying it to themselves, went into a rebellion,"! 

Josephus himself calls this an ambiguous oracle, and admits its appli- 
cation to Vespasian only, though found in their sacred Scriptures. § So 
little will the passage serve the cause in which it has been enlisted. 

There is no reasonable ground for thinking that by Chrestus, Sue- 
tonius meant Christus. Chrestus itself is a proper name for any good 
man. And by a most curious coincidence with the orthography of Sue- 
tonius, we find the earliest Fathers actually punning on the word ; hold- 
ing it as entirely indifferent whether they were called Christians, or 
Christians ; giving equally absurd and riddle me ree reasons for either 

* Judseos irapulsore Chresto, assidue* tumultuantes Roma expulit. - 
t Affiled suppliers Christiani, genus hominum superstitionis novae et maleficae. 
X Percrebuerat Oriente toto, vetus et constans opinio, esse in fetis, ut eo tem- 
pore Judea profecti rerum potirentur. Id de Imperatore Romano, quantum 
eventu postea patiiit, predictum Judcei ad se traheates rebellarunt. Cap. 4 

Gi*w^rjaw»» to Xoytot nyipoway; 0Mro}u&ci>TOf «r* M$a>ia$ avToxparopoc . — os. de J. Bell 
1. 6, c i 5, sect. 4. 

48 . 2 z 



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978 EXTERNAL BVIDBNCB. 

the one name or the other, but never distinctly pretending to derive that 
name from any particular Christus, or Chrestsus, who had had a real 
existence, and been the founder of their sect. The mere Iotacism « 
change of the long e, into i, or i into s, often occasioned the substitu- 
tion of the one word for the other, 

1. The disciples were called Christian* first at AxJioch; ActsxL 
26; that is, unquestionably, they assumed not the name themselves, but 
it was given them by the Gentiles, in whose sense of it, consequently, 
the real meaning of it is to be found. 

2. Justin Martyr, in his account of the name, which he gives in his 
apology to Antoninus Pius, thus puns away all possible reference to the 
name of Christ . as the founder of a sect " We are called Christians. 
So, then, we are the best of men (Chrestians), and it can never be just 
to hate what is (chrest) good and kind.* 

3. Theophilus of Antioch, after a long string of puns upon Christus, 
and Chrestus ; thinks that Christus, and not Chrestus, should be the 
word, because of the sublime significancy of Christus, which signifies 
"the sweet, and agreeable ; and most useful, and never to be laughed 
at article ofpomatum.f 

" What use of a ship (he argues) unless it be besmeared? What 
tower or palace would be elegant or useful unless it were greasedT* 
* What man comes into life or enters into a conflict, without being 
anointed ? What piece of work could be considered finished, if it were 
not oiled ? The air itself and every creature under heaven, is as it were 
anointed with light and spirit Undoubtedly we are called Christians ; 
for this reason, and none other, than because we are anointed with th« 
oil of GooV'J 

Tertullian,§ Clemens Alexandrinus,] and St. Jerom,T abound in the 
same strain.— Every where we meet with puns and conundrums on the 

* Xpiffvtfsvoi mmu xamyopavptd*, ro3t xpnaTON ptanffSa* w Juuwai— XftKTfvraT* 

t Ot* to xfwvai n&v hum tvxpiffToy *** cnutTayeA*jTo» «ffTi.«**«*. x- X. lib. 1, Ab, 
Autolycum. 

t Toiyfltpouy */*«$ rovrou urnuf x**ot//*i3a jjpwTMwo*, ot* ;$pwf«&c& tXou<* 0e«r- 
Ibidem, 

§ Cum perperam Christianus pronunciatur, (puta Chresttanus) de suavitaJevel 
penignitate compositum nomen est— Tertul. 

|| Quia apud Grecos, XP 1 * 7707 ** utrumque sonat Virtus est ienis blanda | 
tranquilla et omnium bonorum consortio. — Hieronym. in Gal. v. 22. 

1T AuTMMfr o* u{ xpwrw *nrwPTiw«OTK %awrm t« u<n %o* 7iPyQ9ren.—~Clemenlit 
Strommat. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. SW 

name ; no where with a vestige of the teal existence of a person to whom 
the name was distinctively appropriate. 



*LINT, A. D. 110. 

FHny the younger was born a. d. 61. He held important civil and 
religious offices under the Roman Government, was the personal friend 
of Tacitus, and was in the year 106 sent by the emperor Trajan as pro- 
consul into the province of Bithynia, from whence be wrote the annexed 
letter : 

" *PIiny to the emperor Trajan wisheth health and happiness. — It 
is my constant custom, sir, to refer myself to you in ail matters concern- 
ing which I have any doubt : for who can better direct me when I hesi- 
tate, or instruct me when I am ignorant? I have never been present at 

* Solenne est mihi, Domine, omnia de quibus dubito, ad te referre : quis enim 

grtest melius vel cunctationem meam regere, vel ignorantiam meam instruere. 
ognitionibus de Christianis interful uunquam : ideo vel quid vel quatenus aut 
puniri soleat aut quteri, neseio. Nee etiam haisitavi mediocriter, sitae aliquod 
discrimen cetatum, an quamlibet teneri nihil a robustioribus different : deturne 
ponitentiae venia, an ei qui prorsus Christianus rait, destsse non prosit : nomen 
ipsum, etiamsi flagitiis careat, an flagitia oohserentia nomini puniantur. Interim 
in iis qui ad me tanquam Christiani deferebantur, hunc sum sequutus modum. 
Interrogavi ipsos, an essent Christiani : confitentes iterum ac tertio interrogavi,' 
supplicio minatus ; perseverantes duci jussi. Neque enim dubitabam, qualecun- 
que esset quod faterentur, pervicaciam certfe, et infiexibilem obstinationem debere 
puniri. Fuefunt alii similis amentias : quos, quia cives Romani efant, annotavi 
inurbem remittendos. Mox ipso tractu, ut fieri solet, diffundente se criinine, 
plures species inciderunt Propositus est libellus, sine auctore, muitorum nomint 
continens, qui negarent se esse Christianos, aut raisse ; quum, preeunle me, deos 
appellarent, et imagini tuae, quam propter hoc jusseram cum simulacris numinum 
anerri, thure ac vino supplicarent ; preterea maledicerent Christo : quorum nihil 
cogi posse dicuntur, qui sunt reverb Christiani. Ergo dimittendos putavi. Alii 
ab indice nominati, esse se Christianos dixerunt, et mox negaverunt : raisse qui* 
dein, sed desisse, quidam ante triennium, quidam ante plures annos, non nemo 
etiam ante viginti quoque. Omnes et imaginem tuam, deorumquc simulacra 
venerati sunt ; ii et Christo maledixerunt. Affirmabant autem, banc raisse sum- 
mam vel culpa; sua?, vel erroris, qubd essent soliti stato die ante iucem con venire; 
carmenque Christo, quasi Deo, dioere secum invtcem j stque Sacramento non in 
scelus aliquod obstringere, sed ne furta, ne latrocinia, ne adulteria committerent, 
ne fidem Merent, ne depositum appellati abnegarent : quibus peractismorem sibi 
discedendi fuisse, rursusque coeundi ad capiendum oibum, promiscuum tameif, 
et innoxium : quod ipsum facere desisse post ediotum meum, quo secundum 
mandata tua hetssrias esse f etueram. Quo magis necessaiium credidi, ex duabus 



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m KxTERNAL. EVIDENCE. 

any trials of Christians ; so that I knew not well what is the Subject 
matter of punishment, or of enquiry, or what strictness ought to be 
used in either. Nor have I been a little perplexed to determine whether 
any difference ought to be made on account of age, or whether the /oung 
and tender, and the full grown and robust, ought to be treated all alike ; 
whether repentance shouldentitle to pardon, or whether all who have once 
been Christians ought to be punished, though they are now no longer 
so ; whether the name itself; although no crimes be detected, or crimes 
only belonging to the name, ought to be punished. Concerning all 
these things I am in doubt. 

" in the mean time, I have taken this course with all who have been 
brought before me, and have been accused as Christian.;. I have put 
the question to them, whether they were Christians ? Upon their con- 
fessing to me that they were, I repeated the question a second and a 
third time, threatening also to punish them with death. Such as still 
persisted, I ordered away to be punished ; for it was no doubt with me, 
whatever might be the nature of their opinions, that contumacy and in- 
flexible obstinacy ought to be punished. There were others of the same 
infatuation, whom, because they are Roman citizens, I have noted down 
to be sent to the city. In a short time, the crime spreading itself, even 
whilst under persecution, as is usual in such cases, divers sorts of people 
came in my way. An information was presented to me, without men- 
tioning the author, containing the names of many persons, who, upon 
examination, denied that they were Christians, or had ever been so ; 
who repeated after me an invocation of the gods, and, with wine and 
frankincense, made supplication to your image, which for that purpose 
I had caused to be brought and set before them, together with the 
statues of the deities. Moreover, they reviled the name of Christ 
None of which things, as is said, they who are really Christians can by 
any means be compelled to do. These, therefore, I thought proper to 
discharge. 

ancillis, quae ministne dicebantur, quid esset veri et per formenta quserere. Sed 
nihil aliud inveoi, quam superstitionem pravam et imiuodicam. Ideoque, dilattt 
coguitione, ad consulendum te decurri. Visa est enim mitii res digna consultatione, 
maxime propter periclitantium numerum. Multi enim omnia setatis, omnia ordinis, 
utriusque sexua etiam, vocantur in periculum,etvocabuntur. Nequeenim civitates 
tantum sed vicos etiam atque agros superstitionis istius contagio pervagata est : quae 
videtur sisti et corrigi posse. Certe satis constat, prope jam desolata templa 
coepisse celebrari, et sacra solennia dia intermissa repeti : passimque venire vie- 
timas, quarum adhuc rarissimus emptor inveniebatur. Ex quo facile est opinari, 
quae turba honoinura emendari possit, si sit pcenitentiae locus/' — Plinii Epistolar. 
Jib. 70, Epist. 97. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. tot 

" Others were named by an informer, who at first confessed that they 
were Christians, but afterwards denied it : and some, acknowledging 
that they had been, declared that they had relinquished the profession, 
some above three years ago, some a longer time, and several, more than 
twenty years. All these paid the accustomed divine honours both to 
your statue and to the images of the gods ; and they also reviled Christ. 
They moreover declared that the whole of v hat was laid to their charge, 
whether it were a crime or a mere error, consisted in this : that they 
made it a practice, on a stated day, to meet together before day-light,* 
to "sing hymns with responses to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves 
by a solemn institution, not to any wrong act, but that they would not 
commit any thefts or robberies or acts of unchastity ; that they would 
never violate a trust ; that, when these observances were nuished, they 
separated, and afterwards came together again to a common and inuo- 
cent repast ; but that they had given over this last practice after my 
edict, in which, according to your orders, I forbad social meetings. 
Upon these declarations, I thought it requisite to get at the entire troth 
by putting to the torture two women who were called deaconesses : but 
I discovered nothing beyond an austere and excessive superstition. 
Upon the whole, therefore, I determined to adjourn the trials, in order 
to consult you ; for the case appears to me to demand my so doing, par* 
ticularly on account of the great number of the persons who are in 
danger of suffering. For many of all ages and every rank, of both sexes 
likewise, are accused, and will be accused. Nor has the contagion of 
this superstition seized cities only, but the villages and the country. It, 
however, still seems to me, that this evil may easily be restrained. For 
it is, assuredly, sufficiently obvious, that it is upon the decline. The: 
temples, which were a tittle while ago almost deserted, begin to be re- 
sorted to, as usual ; and victims which hitherto hardly found a purchaser 
are now in full request ; whence you may naturally suppose, that a mul- 
titude of men might be reclaimed, if allowance were granted to their 
repentance."* — Pliny's Epistles, book 10, letter 97. 

However little room for doubt of the genuineness and authenticity of 
this letter there may seem to be, we ought not to have known that the 
name of Christians was common to the worshippers of the god Serapis ; 
and the name of Christ common to the whole rabblement of gods, kings, 

* If this letter be genuine, these nocturnal meetings were" what no prudent go*! 
vernment could allow ; they fullyjustify the charges of Csciliusin Minutius Felix,, 
of Celsus in Origen, and of Lucian, that the primitive Christians were a skulking, 
Ught-shunning, secret, mystical, freemasonry sort of confederation, against the 
general welfare and peace of society. 



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3S» EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

and priests ; that the practices described in this letter are none other 
than were common to innumerable sects of crack-brained pagan vision-, 
aries ; and that the observers of these practices were generally found to 
be such desperately wicked characters as are ever prompt to turn faith 
into faction, and religion into rebellion ; so that no vigilant and prudent 
magistrate could be indifferent to their machinations, or not feel him- 
self bound to use all the powers with which the laws invested him, to 
sift the principles and grounds of their combination, and to make him- 
self thoroughly acquainted not only with all that they professed, but 
with their arcana interiora, the more interior secrets, policy, and pur- 
pose of their institution. We cannot imagine, that so wise and good a 
man, so just and candid a mgaistrate, who evidently wished to make 
the best of the case for the accused party, would conceal from his friend 
and master, Trajan, any thing in their favour that had come to his 
knowledge. 

Did they tell him, then, that they were the followers of a religion 
which had " God for its author, happiness for its end, and truth without 
a ny mixture of error for its matter ?" 

Did they tell him that they were the disciples of one, who then, and 
as yet within the memory of man, had a real existence, had taught a 
purer morality, had wrought miracles, had died, and risen again to life? 

Did they lay down the important distinction between this ** teacher 
sent from God :" and the innumerable Christs, Messiahs, Emmanuels, 
Logoses, Words, and Messengers of the heathen mythology, in that hb 
was the object of history ; they the figments of romance ; that "H£ was 
real/ they an empty name ?" 

Did they so much as mention the name of Jesus of Nazareth ? Did 
'they refer to one single circumstance of his life as a man, or drop an 
enigma that could set the mind to guess at the Galilean rather than the 
dtagyrite ? or make it more probable, that they meant the man of Naza- 
reth rather than the €acodemon of the Forest ? . No ! No ! nothing of 
the sort ! not a text, not an iota, not a vestige of Christianity in her. 
We have the name of Christ, and nothing else but the name, where the 
name of Apollo or Bacchus would have filled up the sense quite as weD. 

It is not to be concealed, however, that the literati of Germany 
have maintained, that this celebrated letter is another instance to be 
added to the long list of Christian forgeries; and that the more 
learned German divines and critics have pretty generally given it up. 
The learned Dr. Sender, of Leipsic, adduces nine arguments against 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 988 

its authenticity,* is supported by Corrodent and was replied to by 
Haversaas} and Gierig.§ 

My room will not admit my entering on the merits of this contro- 
versy ; and as, after all I have heard of it, I am not disposed to admit 
the passage to be fairly conquered, there is the less occasion for my 
doing so. I still think it may be genuine, and that mainly upon the 
strength of its amounting to so very little or nothing in weight of 
evidence, even if its genuineness were unquestionable. . 

I leave the reader to give what consideration he may to the objections 
to the claims of this Epistle, which I subjoin without the advantage of 
the lights Dr. Semler may have cast on the subject. 

1. The undeniable feet that the first Christians were the greatest 
liars and forgers that had ever been in the whole world, and that they 
actually stopt at nothing. 

2. The undeniable fact that it was not the ignorant and vulgar 
among them, but their best scholars, the shrewdest, cleverest, and 
highest in rank and talent, who were the practitioners of these forge* 
ries.|| 

3. The flagrant atopism of Christians being found in the remote 
province of Bythinia, before they had acquired any notoriety in 
Rome.^f 

4. The inconsistency of religious persecution, with the just and 
philosophical character of the Roman government. 

5. The inconsistency of the supposition that so just and moral a 
people as the primitive Christians are assumed to have been, should 
have been the first to provoke the Roman government to depart from 
its universal maxims of toleration, liberality, and indifference. 



* Neue Versuche die Kirehen historie der ersten Jahrunderte inehr aufzuk- 
laren: by Jo. Salom. Semler, Leipsic* 1788, Fesc. 1, pp. 119 — 246. 

-f* Beytragi zur Beforderung des versmuftigew Denkens in der Religion. 

J Vertheidigung der Plinischeu Brtfe uber die Arristen gegen die Einwen- 
dungen der H. D. Semler, Gottingen, 1788. 

§ Gierig — m his editionof the Letters of C. Plinius Secund., Leipsic, 1802 — 
Gierig, acknowledges the meritorious diligence and fidelity of Semler, in exa- 
mining the credibility of the monuments of antiquity. The German divines 
have almost the exclusive merit of the faculty of being just and civil to their 
theological opponents; but their orthodoxy is proportionally suspicious. 

|| " Origen actually embodied fraud into a system, practised it with the ap- 
probation of his fellows, and gave it the technical name of Economu, by 
which it has gone ever since/' — Higgins's Celtic Druids. 

% " Quo cuocta undique atrocia aut pudenda confluunt celebranturque V 



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884 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

6. The inconsistency of such conduct with the humane and dignified 
character of Pliny. 

7. The use of the torture to extort confession — torturing and tor- 
menting being peculiarly and characteristically Christian. 

8. The choice of women to be the subjects of this torture ; when tae 
ill-usage of women was, in like manner, abhorrent to the Roman cha- 
racter, and peculiarly and characteristically Christian. 

9. The repetition of this letter in the one ascribed to Tiberianus, 
being precisely such a repetition as we find of the famous forgery of 
Josephus, in the Persic History of Christ, by Jeremiah Xavier.* A 
forgery having once been successful, it should seem the Christians 
must needs ply it again. So here is a second throw at the same game. 

" Tiberianus, Governor of Syria, to the Emperor Trajan. 

" I am quite tired with punishing and destroying the Galilaeans, or 
those of the sect called Christians, according to your orders ; yet they 
never cease to profess voluntarily what they are, and to offer themselves 
to death. Wherefore, I have laboured, by exhortations and threats, to 
discourage them from daring to confess to me, that they are of that 
sect. Yet in spite of all persecution, they continue still to do it Be 
pleased, therefore, to let me know what your highness thinks proper to 
be done with them." Colelr. Patr. Apostol. vol. 2, p 181 ; Middleton 
citante, p. 201. 

No rational man will doubt the forgery of this pretended epistle, 
which, though thrown earlier in time, is a palpable repetition of the good 
hit that had been made in the epistle, ascribed to Pliny. 

I have no doubt at all of the forgery of the passage of Tacitus. But 
if the objections which I have stated, or any other, be really fatal to 
this of Pliny, I would recommend my reverend opponents and all other 
assertors that the historical evidences of Christianity are inassailable, 
to curse, and swear, and storm, and plunge, and persecute ; to revile, 
defame, and injure their opponents as much as they possibly can, to 
represent them as miserably ignorant, as desperately wicked, as fools, 
liars, madmen, and idiots ; but above all, to treat both them and their 
writings with the most sovereign contempt.— 'Tis the best they can 
make of their bad bargain, ,_. _ . > 



* Extat etiam in Historia Christi, Persice scripta ab Hieronymo Xaverio, 
Epistola Pilati ad Imp. Tiberium, quam confinxisse videtur Xaverius e loco 
celebri qui de Christo legitur, lib. 18. Antiquitatum Josephi, c. 4. Nullius est 
epistola hec vel fidei vel autoritatis. — Fabrkii Codex Apoctyphus. torn. 1, 
p. 301, a. d. 1703, Hamburgi. 



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■ EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 365 

EPICTETUS, A.D. 111. 

A. slave, in body lame, as Irus poor, 
«, Yet to the Gods was Epictetus dear.* 

lie is placed by Lardner about a.d. 109, and in his Enchiridion, 
or Manual of Moral Virtue, occurs the single allusion which may be 
supposed to be contained in the sentence here subjoined : 

" go it is possible that a man may arrive at this temper, and become 
indifferent to these things from madness, or from habit, as the Gali- 

leans^f 

. In Dr. Lardner's collection of the Evidences of the Christian Re- 
ligion, this mode of expression is of sufficient consequence to be intro- 
duced with his remark, / should rather think that Christians are in-' 
tended, p. 49. 



PLUTAECH, A. D..140, 

In his dialogue de defectu Oracubrum, relates a strange story about 
a man being divinely admonished to cry out " Tata great Pan is 
dead/' Huet (and other equally learned and impartial Christian 
evidence hunters) suppose that hereby the death of Christ, who is the 
tbue Pan, the parent of all things, and the author of all nature, was 
notified to heathen people. 



JUVENAL, A. D. 1 10. 

The Roman satirical poet, in his first satire, has three lines, suffi- 
cient to supply a possible allusion to the sufferings of the primitive 
Christians, and a frightful vignette to the congenial taste of the ad-' 
mirers of the pocket edition of Paley's Evidences. 

"Describe Tigellinus, and you shall suffer the same punishmeat 
with those who' stand burning, in their own flame, their head being 
held up by a stake fixed to their chin, till they make a long stream of 
blood and melted sulphur on the ground."^ — Palexfs rendering. 

* This distich, in Greek verse, is generally attached to the portraits of this 
ornament of the human race. 

X Pone Tigellinum, tseda lucebis in ilia 
Qua stantes ardent, qui fixo gutture rumant 
Et latum media sulcum deducis arena.— Juv. Sat. 1, v. 155. 
49 3 B 



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8fifi EXTERNAL EVIDENCE* 



THE EMPEROtt ADRIAN, A. D. 134. 

Tke letter of the 'Emperor Adrian to his brother-in-law Servianus, 
written in tke year 134, and preserved in Ftavht* Vapicms, who 
.Hottrished about a. d. 300. 

*« Egypt, which you commended to me, my dearest Serviamus, I 
have found to be wholly fickle and inconstant, and continually wafted 
about by every breath of fame. The worshippers of Serapis are 
Christians; and those are devoted to the God Serapis, who I find call 
themselves the bishops of Christ. There is here no ruler of a Jewish 
.synagogue, no Samaritan, no Presbyter of the Christians, who is not 
either an astrologer, a soothsayer, or a minister to obscene pleasures. 
The very patriarch himself, should he come into Egypt, would be re- 
quired by some to worship Serapis t and by others to worship Christ. 
They have, however, but one God, and it is one and the self-same 
whom Christians, Jews, and Gentiles alike adore, u e, money." 

Coincident with this unsophisticated testimony, is the never-re- 
futed charge of Zozimus, that the Emperor Constantine learned the 
Christian Religion from an Egyptian ;f and the feet admitted by So- 
crates, that the cross was found in the temple of Serapis,! and claimed 
by his worshippers as the proper symbol of their religion. 



THE EMPEBOB MASCTT8 AVBBLIV8 ANTONINUS, THE PHILOSOPHER, 

A. D. 180, 

In the eleventh of the twelve books of his meditations, speaks of a 
becoming fortitude of soul, as wholly of a superior character to that 
mere obstinacy, as of the Christians. The single phrase «* « 
XP<m«i»c " like the Christians," is the whole amount of this testi- 

* Adrianus Aug. Serviano Cos. S. " iEgypura quam mihi laudabus Ser- 
riane carissime, totam didici levem, pendulam et ad omnia famae momenta 
voiitantem. I Hi qui Serapim colunt, Christiani sunt : et devoti sunt Serapi, 
qui se Christi epitoopos dicunt Nemo illic Arehisynagogus Judaeorura, nemo 
Samarites, nemo Christianorum presbyter, — non Matheraaticus, non Aruspei, 
Aliptes. Ipse ille patriarcha quum in iEgyptum venerit ab alii* Serapidera 

adorare, ab aliiscogitur Christum Unus illis Dtiu* est huuc 

Judaei, hunc omnes venerantur et gentes." 

t See the chapter on Constantine. 

X See the passage, p. 190 in this Dieossis. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 387 

many. Nor it it certain whether by the name of Christians, he means 
the worshippers of Christ, or of Serapis. Below is the* Whole context.* 



M. VALERIA MAR*IALt8, A. D. lit). 

v • • 

Contemporary with Juvenal, has an epigram, the gist of winch is to 
ridicule the folly of giving the credit of rational fortitude to those 
fool-hardy wretches that rush on voluntary sufferings, and who would 
stand to be baked in ovens, or hold their limbs Over red hot coals, for 
the purpose of exciting sympathy rand who, it is assumed, could be 

nobody else than the primitive Christians. 

r 

" In matutina nuper spectatus arena, 
Mucins, imposttit 401 sua membra focis 
Si pattens fortisque tibi durusqae videtur 
Abderitanse pectora plebis habes ; 
Nam cum dicatur tunica praesente molesta 
Ure manum: plus est dicere non facio." 

" As late you saw, in early morning's show, 
Mncius, the fool, on red-hot ashes glow. 
If brare and patient, thence, he seems to thee, 
Thou art, methinks, as great a fool as he j 
For there, in robe of pitch, the fire prepared, 
The wretch would burn, because the people stared. 



LtlCltfS APC7LEIUS, A. I>. 164, 

Of Madaura, wrote a fantastical book of metamorphoses, probably in 
principle somewhat similar to that of Ovid* Onr beaters* up for evi- 
dences of the Christian religion have .enlisted this work also ; and in a 
ridiculous story in which a man who was metamorphosed into an ass, 
and in that incarnation sold to a baker,— describes his mistress, the 
baker's wife, as a red-hot virago, an adulterous, drunken thief, cheat 
scold, and liar ; but withal (as such characters generally are) pecu- 

* 0»* 6<rnv j 4/0^i, n cto»/ao? cou r,|„ auFokvdwou 2u rou aw/taro*. Km wtoi 
<rpt<rvr)vou, a%uetardwcu 9 n avupuiau ! 

To »■ ito»/*o» tovto no. euro *W npxwcwi /** kcctoc ^W T*p*T*f*V 

»* w yo»<rr*aw», a\*a *i*oy*r/*«w;s *** <rs/*wj xai wcrri xm *XA» wturcu 



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388 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

liarly religious,* we are to imagine that we hare some sort of evi- 
dence of the existence of Christianity. Dr. Lardner concludes, " there 
can be no doubt that Apuleius here designs to represent a Christian 
woman." No doubt, no doubt ! 'Tis hard to tell, whether Christianity 
or the ladies owe him the profounder curtsey. 

With all deference to the judgment of Dr. Lardner, I venture tc 
suggest, that this passage has not the remotest relation to that evi- 
dences for the Christian religion, which he wishes to bring forward. It 
bears a strong indication of the better and more honourable rank 
which the wife held in. the domestic economy, under the ancient pa- 
ganism, a fact which he and all other Christian advocates endeavour 
always to conceal. It indicates the prevalence of that better feeling 
towards the lair sex, which would have shuddered at the indelicacy of 
dragging virgin-modesty into the presence of a liquorish priest, to 
utter an enforced acknowledgment of sentiments, which, whether 
felt or not, were never meant by nature to be acknowledged, and to 
make vows and pledges ef abject subjection and obedience until death, 
beyond all measure of obligation, in which any rational and intelli- 
gent being could be bound to one who may become false, and so de- 
serve to be forsaken ; may become tyrannous, and therefore deserve to 
be hated. This undesigned discovery of the domestic economy under 
pagan auspices, is strongly corroborated by the fact, that among the 
paintings found in the ruins of Herculaneum, is a chaste and beautiful 
figure of the matrimonial Venus {Venus Pronuba), holding a sceptre 
of that dominion enjoyed by the wife in domestic affairs. Hence as 
Festus under the article clavii observes, " the keya were consigned to 
the wife as soon as she entered her husband's house. To this purpose, 
may the custom of the Egyptians be observed, among whom the wife 
ruled in the private concerns of her husband ; and accordingly in their 
marriage ceremonies, he promised to obey herP\ Neither Christians 
nor Turks have ever been just to women. 



* Pistor ille qui, pessimametante cunctas mulieres longe deterrimam sortitus 
conjugem, pcenas extremas tori larisque sustinsbat ; scceva, soeva, vitiosa,' ebriosa 
pervicax, pertiuax, in rapinis turpibus ayara,in sumptions turpibus i profusa, ini- 
Siica fidei, hostis pudiciuoe. Tunc spretis'atqe calcatis d|vinis numinibus in vicem 
certs religiouis mentita sacrilega prasumptione Dei quern pnedicaret unicum 
contiectis, observationibus vanis fallens omnes homines, et miserum maritum 
decipiens, matutino mero, et continuo stupro corpus mancaparat. Talis ilia 
mulier miro me persequebatur odio nam et ante lucauo recubans adhuc subjungi 
machinae novitium clamabat asinum ."-~-Ite citot Lardneriut, Tom 4, p. 107. 

f Univ. Mag. 1778. p. 134. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE 389 

LUClANUS, A.D. l?&, 

A pagan satirist, is by far the most explicit and diffuse of all pagan 
writers, who at any time within the two first centuries have taken 
notice of the existence of the Christian sect, and of their doctrines, as 
distinguishable in those early times from any or all the other modes of 
piety. — His testimony, though so much later than that of Pliny, is 
entirely corroborated by it, and of the utmost' consequence to the 
establishing of the historical feet of the real state of things in his time. 
The only reason I can conceive, why our Christian evidence writers 
have made so little account of this heathen testimony* is, that Chris* 
tian evidence writers have in general been tinctured with Unitarianism, 
and therefore, rather willing that the cause of Christianity should lose 
one of its main pillars, than that it should receive support from one, 
which, at the same time, demonstrates, that the doctrine of the Trinity 
was really the earliest and purest form of Christianity ; and conse- 
quently, whether Christianity be true of false, the Unitarian Scheme is 
as unauthorised in history, as it is beyond all absurdities that even 
were in the world the most disgustingly and insolently absurd. 
Lucian had seen and conversed with St Paul, and learned from him, 
immediately what his doctrine was — and even gives us a description 
of his person as well as of the manners and character of the Christian 
sect ; which, after all the deduction that we canYeasonably be required 
to make from his testimony, as being that of an enemy, retains the 
corroborating countenance of every other document on the subject, of 
which we are in possession, not excepting that of the New Testament 
itself. In his dialogue, entitled Philopatris, under tjie character of 
Triephon, he describes their form of oath, as being " by the high 
reigning, great, immortal, heavenly father, the son of the father, and 
the spirit proceeding from the father ; one in three, and three in one" 
The same dialogist continues, " I shall teach you who the real Pan\ 
is ; and who was before all things — for I formerly underwent the same 
things as you, when that Galilean, {Paul the Apostk\) met me, that 
bald-headed, hook-nose fellow, who went up through the air into the 
third heaven, and was there taught the best things ;§ and who hath 

* Ttypiion* $w», ptyay, a/^Sporw, vp^nwya, vm» X»rpof, wimp* ix T«Tpo$ 
uuroptvoftflw, iy i* rptuy, xcu i£ ivo? TpM». 

f Comparenhe testimony of Plutarch in this Diboesis. 

J This Parenthesis is actually found in the Latin version of Koitholt. 

§ 2 Corinth. 12. 2. 



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» EXTBRNAL BV10BMCB. 

regenerated us by water, and hath made us to walk in the steps of the 
blessed, and redeemed us from the realms of the wicked ; and I will 
make you, if yon will hear me, — a man indeed."* The description of 
the apostolic chief of sinners, here drawn indeed by an unfriendly 
hand, is singularly supported by all the bas relievos, sculptures, and 
celebrated paintings of his person, in whieli, in addition to the short 
squabby figure, bald head, beetle brows, and prodigiously large and 
hook.*l nose, he is invariably represented as pot-bellied and bandy- 



le indeed describes himself as having a particularly mean and. 
dirty look, and a stammering voice ;t that he could hardly stand on 
his feet ;f that he was subject to fits, and severely afflicted with a dis- 
ease, J which cannot be spoken of but in periphrases. 

In his dialogue concerning the death of Perigrinus, Lucian speaks 
of the object of the Christian's worship, — as a crucified sophist ! Little 
stress is laid, however, by Christians, on this admission, though its 
authenticity is for less questionable than that of Tacitus. It is seen at 
once that this testimony does not pledge Lucian to an avowal of the 
fact of the crucifixion, but is his report of the report which Christians 
had given of themselves ; as that of Tacitus is no more, even if it were 
genuine. 

Neither Lucian nor Tacitus were believers. 

Lucian has, however/ in the same dialogue, a far more explicit testi- 
mony to the then character of Christians ; he tells us, that " whenever 
any crafty juggler, expert in his trade, and who knew how to make a 
right use of things, went over to the Christians, he was sure to grow 
rich immediately, by making a prey of their simplicity ."$ 



Eyoy«p 0? }»£*£« T* to IIAN, km tk o wpvnr veurtn — Kcu yof vpmv nay* 
rat/rat tvcurx^y *t«P av, mix* & /uo* raAtXoMof f trrv^fy, aia$aXctrrMK urtppuo* 
i( Tptrw t*p*w oupoSarnrCH, xeu tat, KaXkurra, f xpf/Lta.&ixA'? h viaroi h/aok ontxeu- 
th&w f$ r» run paatafmixnavaQi&u&t&i x%i txrm artfltn XW* */**$ iXt/Tp«w*ro, 
km <rt row* nv /as «x**k «r* aX«$&»c wSpwiro*. Pro auctoritate Koriholtus. 
p. 142. 

t 2 Corinth. 12. 7.; 4 Galet 13,; 1 Coloss. 24; 2 Corinth. 11. 6;— 
1 Corinth. 2. 3. ; 2 Corinth. 5. 13. ; 2 Corinth. 10. 10. 

I Tof *n<TxokovvTtJHti*r ixumv m^thf cwt«f. 

§ This passage is quoted before in the chapter on iEsculapius. I have also 
before quoted the Testimony of Lucian, p. 376, as satisfactorily proving the 
identity of St. Paul, distinctively from this testimony to the character of Chris- 
tianity. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 991 

4JKCIENT WHITERS, WHOSE WORKS, -STILL REMAINING, WERE WRITTEN 
BETWEEN A. D. 35, ARO A. D. 200. 

I. Those who have mentioned the Christians wrote about :— • 
A. i>. 107 C. Plinius second, juiu in his, 96th epistle. 

1 10 C. Suetonius Tranquill, in his Life of Nero. 

110 Cornel. Tacitus, in his Annals 15. a. 44. 

138 The Emperor Adrian, in his epistle to Servianus. 

130 M. Aurel, Antonin. philos,, in his Meditations, b. 1 1. 

] 76 Lucianus, in his dialogue on the death of Poregrinus, and in 

his Philopatris. ' 
176 Celsus, in his " Essay on the True Word ;" resting the Honour 

ofOrigen. 

II. Those who are supposed by some writers on the Christian Evi- 
dences, to have alluded to the Christians ; wrote about — 

A. d. 98 Dio Prusaeus, in a particular phrase.* 

100 M. Valer. Martialis, in the epigram quoted in this Diegesis. 
100 Dec. jun. Juvenalis, in three lines quoted in this Diegesis. 
109 Epictetus, in a single phrase quoted in this Diegesis. 
140 Arrianus,t in the use of the same phrase. 
164 Lucius Apuleius, as quoted in this Diegesis. 
176 JElius Aristides, in the use of a particular phrase.J 

III. Those who would be likely to refer to the Christians, but who 
have not done so, wrote about— 

. A. d. 40 Philo. 

40 Josephus. 

?9 SiKr" theelder - § } ™«*«*. 



* O* mtr» J**/9**Xo*Tif-»-those who cast away every thing.— Dio Prus. 

t (U ok Talufauoi— like the Galileans— Arrian. 

t Tot s iv x*Xou<rnvri Swrtfcw — to the impious people in Palestine. 

§ Both those philosophers were living, and must hare experienced the imme- 
diate effects, or received the earliest information, of the existence of Jesus Qirist, 
had such a person ever existed ; their ignorance or their wilful silence on the 
subject, is not less than outrageously improbable. Whatever might be their ex- 
positions with respect to the doctrines of Jesus, the miraculous darkness which is 
«aid to have accompanied his crucifixion, was a species of evidence that must have 
forced itself upon their senses. " Each of these philosophers, in a laborious work, 
has recorded all the great phenomena of nature, earthquakes, meteors, comets, 
and eclipses, which his indefatigable curiosity could collect ; neither of them 



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999 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

79 Diogenes Laertius 
79 Pausanias ) n*-w~*a.«— 
79 Pompon Mek. / Geo ^ her8 - 
79 Q. Curtius Ruf. 1 
79 Luc. Flor. i 

123 Appianas > Historians. 

140 Justinus [ 

141 ^lianas , J 

IV. Those who were less likely to allude to the Christians, yet must 
have gone somewhat out of their way, on purpose to avoid doing so ; 
wote about — 

A. d. 63 Aneneus Lucanus 

64 Petroniu8 Arbiter ") 

64 Silius Italicus | 

65 M. Ann. Lucanus )-Pdets 
65 Valerius Flaccus 
62 Aulas Perseus 
90 Papinus Statius 

100 Quinctilianus 
130 Ptolemaeus. 
Observe too, that in the Cdrpus Juris, or, whole body of Roman law n 
there is not extant one word against the Christians. 



I 

r 



In apology for this tremendous deficiency of evidence — Dr. Lardner* 
pleads in mitigation of judgment, the following instance of a similar de- 
ficiency of historical evidence, in cases where the fact is nevertheless 
held to be unquestionable. 

1. Velleius Paterculus is mentioned by no ancient writer except 
Priscian, though that historian certainly lived and wrote at the time of 
Tiberjus. 

2. M. Annaeus Seneca, the father of the philosopher, is almost un- 
known. 

3. Lucianus has never mentioned Cicero in his encomium on De- 
mosthenes. 

ha? mentioned, or even alluded to the miraculous darkness at the crucifixion." 
— Gibbon. Alas ! the Christian is constrained to own that omnipotence itself is 
not-omnipotent. 



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EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 999 

4. Maximus Tyrias (who wrote in the time of Antoninus Puts,) has 
no reference to the Roman History.-— To this we may add :-— 

That Herodotus and Thucydides hare never mentioned the Romans. 



Here is distress indeed ! To pursue the evidences of the Christian 
religion, after we have seen its incomparably most learned and able 
advocates thus striking on the shoals of reckless sophistry ? after we 
have driven the stragglers for a grasp on historical fact, to the last trick 
of gathering together such thousand-miles-o/f-matf-bes of mere possible 
allusion, — and then shewing us the lettered backs of their huge collec- 
tions, as " Volumes of Evidence ;" — would be driving the drift. 

If the evidences of the Christian religion are presumed to be its 
divine effects upon the dispositions and conduct of its professors, the 
peculiar generosity and liberality of Christians towards the enemies and 
opposers of their faith ; their willingness to have its foundations 
thoroughly sifted and examined ; their readyness at all times to acquaint 
themselves with all the objections that can be brought against it, by 
whomsoever or in what manner soever those objections may be urged v 
their abhorrence of all acts of slander and defamation, for the sake of 
excusing themselves from the trouble of enquiry ; their immaculate in- 
nocence, not only of persecution direct and overt — but of the disposi- 
tions that could possibly lead to persecution ; their more rational piety, 
their more exalted virtue, their more diffusive benevolence, — alas ! 
where are those evidences ? 

We have looked for historical evidences which might justify a rational 
man to himself, in believing the Christian religion to.be of God. And 
there are none — absolutely none. We enquired for the moral effects 
which the prevalence of this religion, through so many ages and countries 
of the world, has produced on men's minds, and we find more "horrors, 
crimes, and miseries, occasioned by this religion and its bad influence on 
the heart, more sanguinary wars among nations, more bitter feuds and 
implacable heart-burnings in families ; more desolation of moral princi- 
ple ; more of every thing that is evil and wicked, than the prevalence 
of any vice, or of all vices put together, could have caused : so that the 
evidence which should make it seem probable that God had designed 
this religion to prevail among men, would only go to show that he had 
designed to plague and curse them. But not so; Christian, hold first! 
and ask thine own heart if thou hast not charged God foolishly. Ask 
thine own conventions, whether, if a religion were the wickedest that 
ever was upon earth, and as false as it was wicked, God himself could 
50 3 c 



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394 EXTERNAL EVIDENCE. 

give thee any more likely or fairer, and sufficient means to emancipate 
thy mind from it, than the means thou hast here (if thou wilt use them) 
to discover the real origin, character, and evidences of Christianity. If 
thou believest there is any God at all, at any, rate thou shouldst also be- 
lieve that he is a God of truth, and so sure as he is qo, so sure it is, 
that the pertinacious belief of any thing as true, which we might by the 
free exercise of our rational faculties come to discover to be false, is the 
greatest sin that man can commit against him; implicit faith is the 
greatest of crimes ; and the implicit believer is the most wicked of man- 
kind. 



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• APPENDIX. 



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396 



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•W APPENDIX. 

ANCIENT VERSIONS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

1. ko^s>— The Peshito, the most ancient Syriac version, brought into 
Europe, a.d. 1552. Printed at Vienna, at the expence of the Emperor 
Maximilian. 

2. The Philoxsnian, a later Syriac version, made in the sixth century, 
under the inspection of Philoxenus, Bishop of Hierapolis. Published at 
Oxford, by Professor White, a. d. 1778. 

3. The Coptic, in the ancient dialect of the Lower Egypt Still read, 
thdugh it is not understood. 

4. The Sahjldic, In the ancient dialect of the Upper Egypt. 

5. lue Ethiopic, used in Abyssinia. First published at Rome, a. d. 1548, 
by three Ethiopian editors. 

6. The Armenian, made in the fifth century. Mo genuine' copies in 
existence. 

7. The Pmsic; There are two of this class : neither very ancient ; the one 
a translation from the Syriac, the other from the Greek. 

8. The Latin, sometimes in distinction, called the Italk. These very 
translations of the Greek text, as it stood in the most ancient manuscripts, 
were in general use in an age that precedes the date of any manuscript now 
extant 

9. The Vulgate is that Latin rst corrected and published by the monk 
St. Jerome, a.d. 384, bv order of Pope Damasus, and by the Council of 
Trent pronounced authentic ; so that no one may dare or presume* under 
any pretext, to reject it 

All the French, Italian, and Spanish bibles that were published before 
the sixteenth century, were taken wholly from the Latin.— Martk'i JMi- 
chaelis, vol. 2, p. 7. 

I conclude this general synopsis of the ancient versions of the New 
Testament, bv a striking and spirited censure (as applicable to the great 
author from whom I quote so largely, as to the most bigotted of his fraternity), 
which I find in a very able wort, entitled Palaoronwcal published by Mur- 
ray, 1892, professing to inquire whether the Hellenistic style (that of the 
Greek Testament) is not Latin Greek. " The opinion that the Epistle to 
the Romans waB originally composed in Latin, is not only supported by the 
Syrian scholiast, but has been conjectured by several theologians, chiefly 
of the Roman church :* which, to the shame of Protestantism^ has allowed 
far greater freedom of discussion to its members than has ever been en- 
joyed in those churches which profess to make free inquiry the boon which 
they oner and the very badge of their distinction. In fact, it is difficult to 
say, what has been secretly discovered or not discovered in biblical criticism 

* Were common mum consulted in matters of biblical criticism, what would it say to the 
supposition that an Epistle to the Romans should be written in a language of which die 
Romans were utterly ignoradt ; or to the fact, of the many words in the Greek Testament 
which are nothing more than Latin words written in Greek characters, and such as no 
Greek writer of those times would either hate used or known the use of ? 



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APPENDIX, $9b 

and theology, as authors, on these topics, have hitherto written in fetters : 
and many of them, probably, have suppressed orach of their real senti- 
ments, from an anxiety for their repose." — Palaoromaica, p. 1 86. Gould this 
learned writer hare more significantly given us to understand, that divines 
have never yet had courage enough to be honest men ? 

EDITIONS OF THE GREEK TESTAMENT. 

1. The Complutensian Polyglot, so called from Ccmplutum, the 
ancient name for Alcala, a Spanish University, and polyglot, of many tongues. 
Published at the expence and under the management of the celebrated 
cardinal; statesman, and warrior, Francis Ximenes de Cisneros, the 22nd 
of March, 1520, by permission of Pope ' Leo X. Only 600 impressions 
were taken off. 

2. A.D. 1516. — Erasmus, at Basle in Switzerland, published an edition,, 
from a few manuscripts found in that neighbourhood — a second, a third, 
and, lastly, in a.d. 1527, a fourth, in which, to obviate the clamour of bigots, 
he introduced many alterations, to make it agree with the edition of Cardi- 
nal Ximenes. 

3. A.D. 1650. — Robert Stephens,* a learned printer, at Paris, pub- 
lished a splendid edition, in which he availed himself of the Complutensian 
Polyglot. It abounds with errors, though long supposed to be a correct 
and immaculate work. 

4. A.D. 1589. — Theodore Beza, successor to John Calvin, at Geneva, 
published a critical edition, in which he made use of Robert Stephens* own 
copy, with many additional various readings/f from fifteen manuscripts, 
which had been entrusted to the collation of Henry Stephens, the son of 
Robert, a youth of eighteen years of age. 

5. A.D. 1624.— The Elzevir edition, published at Ley den, at'the office 
of the Elzevirs, who were the most eminent printers of their time. The 
editor is unknown. This edition differs very little from the text of Robert 
Stephens ; a few variations are admitted from the edition of Beza, and a 
very few more upon an unknown authority ; but it does not appear that the 
editor was in possession of any manuscripts. The reputation of the Elze- 
virs for correctness of typography, and the beauty of this specimen, raised 
it to the pinnacle —it was unaccountably taken for granted, that it exhibited 
a pure and perfect text. This, therefore, became the standard of all suc- 
ceeding editions, and constitutes at this day the received text. 

EUROPEAN TRANSLATIONS. 
A.B. 900.— Valdo, Bishop of Frising, caused the gospels to be translated 
into Dutch rhyme. 

* He first introduced the present division of the text of the New Testament into verses. 
— -JUtcAaefo, vol 2, pt. l,f. 527. 

+ The number of the various readings is admitted to be at least one hundred and thirty 
thousand ; the total number of words is one hundred and eighty-one thousand two hundred 
and fifty-three. 



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400 APPMJDIX. 

1160.— Valdos, Bishop of— , caused them to be turned into French 
rhyme. We may guess how closely the original would be adhered to in 
these poems. 

1360. — Charles the Wise is said to have caused them to be turned into 
French prose. • 

1377.— John Trevisa translated them into English. 

The art of printing was discovered aj>. 1444 ; the first printed book in 
England was published by Caxton, a.d. 1474, the 13th of the reign of our 
Edward IV. Before this time our Christian countrymen, generally, must 
have been entirely ignorant of the text of Scripture. 

1517. — William Tyndal made the best English translaltion of the New 
Testament, and was put to death for having done so. 

1611. — The seventh of our King James 1., that is, 217 years since, is the 
date of our present English translation ; in the preface to which, the 
translators admit, that they themselves did not know whether there were 
any translation, or correction of a translation, in existence, in Ring Henry 
the Eighth or King Edward's time. The ground of objection adduced by 
the puritans against the Church of England Liturgy, to King James I., at 
Ham den Court, was, that it maintained the Bible as there translated, which 
they said was a most corrupt translation. In the justice of this complaint, 
originated our present translation under patronage of that " most high and 
mighty prince, James," which the Roman Catholics, with equal justice com- 
plain, that it egregiously Protestantizes, and purposely gives a rendering to 
innumerable phrases, devised to hide and disguise their original and essenti 
ally monkish and papistical significancy. — Ward?* Errata of the Protestant 
Translation, and JohnswCs Histroical Accuunt of the several English Translations 
of the Bible. 



SPURIOUS PASSAGES. 

Passages of the New Testament, retained and circulated as the Word of God, or 

as of equal authority with the rest, though known and admitted on all hands to 

be forgeries. 

Acts xx. 28-r-l Timothy iii. 16.— 1 John v. 7 — These are admitted to be 
of the utmost importance., bearing on the most essential doctrines, yet are 
wilful and wicked interpolations. 

Matt. vi. 15.— The whole of the doxology at the end of the Lord's 
prayer. 

John v.— The 'whole storv of the Pool of Bethesda. 

Luke xyi. 19.— The whole story of the Rich Man in Hell-fire. 

John viii.— Tbe whole story of the Woman taken in Adultery. 

Luke xiii. 39.— The whole story of the Penitent Thief. 

Acts ix. 5, 6.-— The whole paragraph of Christ's Speech out of the 
Clouds. 

The whole of the subscriptions at the end of the Epistle wherever 
found. 

Tbe whole of the titles and superscriptions, wherever found. 



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APPENDIX. 401 

Passages of the New Testament rejected by the German divines, and most eminent 
Christian critics, scholars, and theologians of Europe : or held, as at least, 

INFINITELY SUSPICIOUS. 

The whole of the Gospel of St John, from beginning to end.— Bret- 
Schneider. 

The whole of the Epistle to the Hebrews : of the Epistle of St. James : 
of the 2nd Epistle of Peter: of the 2nd Epistle of John: of the 3d Epistle 
of John : of the Epistle of Jude : of the Revelation—" Not fit to be alleged 
as affording sufficient proof of any doctrine/'— *Dr. Lardner. 
The whole of the last nine verses of Matt i. 
The whole of the second chapter following. 

The whole of the one hundred and twenty-six verses immediately follow- 
ing Luke's preface. 

The whole of the Story of the Angel and the bloody Sweat, (Luke xx. 
43.)-Unitarian Editors. 

The whole story of the Conception, of the Slaughter of the Innocents, of 
the Devil and the herd of swine.— Dr. Evanson. • 
The whole of the genealogy of Christ, as appearing in St. Luke. 
The whole of the story of his baptism, of his transfiguration, of his 
calming the storm. 

The whole of the gospels of Saint Matthew, St Mark, and St John.— 
Evanson. * 

The whole of the Acts of the Apostles was unkpown or rejected by many 
sincere professors of the Christian faith in the fourth century .-Chrysostom. 

The whole of the Epistle to the Romans, the Epistle to the Ephesians, 
the Epistle to the Colossians, the 1st Epistle of Peter, the 1st Epistle of 
John.— Evanson. 

Bishop Marsh makes a droll apology for the blunders of Matthew, Mark, 
and Luke, which he maintains to be perfectly compatible with divine 
inspiration : " John, who was inspired as well as they, had the advantage 
of having a better memory." They had all of them need of good memories, 
or there is no truth in the proverb. 

It is the unquestionably Christian, and unsurpassably learned Evanson,' 
who exclaims, "Gracious God! have mercy upon the presumptuous folly 
and madness of thy erring creatures V'~Dissonance, p. 82 



FALSE REPRESENTATIONS. 

1. It is a false representation, or what would be called in common ' 
parlance — a lie, upon the title-page, where it is represented, that the; New 
Testament is " translated out of the original GreeK," seeing there never 
was any original Greek. The original of Matthew's gospel is believed to 
have been Hebrew. The Epistle to the Romans, and indeed, the whole of 
the New Testament, existed in a barbarous monkish Latin, from which the 
oldest Greek manuscripts in existence are but barbarous translations. 

2. The circulating the whole as the word of God, and as of equal autho- 

51 3d 



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408 APPENDIX. 

rity, notwithstanding its containing several forged and interpolated 
passages, admitted so to be, by the circulators themselves.* 

3. Tue representing Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, aa the omthw9 of 
the gospels which go under their names ; in the teeth of evidence, that those 
gospels are blundering compilations from some previously existing docu- 
ment or documents. 

4. The representing these compilers of previously existing documents, 
as contemporaries or witnesses of the transactions which their compHatons 
detail. 

5. The multiplying the number of pretended witnesses to the facts of the 
gospel, by representing those as witnesses, who are only said by other 
persons, to have been witnesses. 

6. The fear of 'making inquiry whether these things are so, from the fear 
of discovering that they are even so. 

7. The taking any means, fair or foul, direct or indirect, to prevent the 
knowledge of them coming to be generally and extensively spread. 

8. The giving currency or credence to alt manner of scandal, slander* 
and evil speaking ; and heaping all possible calumnies on the motives and 
characters of those who labour to undeceive mankind. 

9. The prosecuting, persecuting, and seeking to destroy or drive out of 
life, those who exert themselves^ to provoke inquiry, and to diffuse know- 
ledge — who sacrifice their own interests to the pobhe good, and prefer the 
luxury of making the world in which they live the better, to all the luxuries 
the world can give. 

10. The taking no notice, or affecting to take none, of the objections to 
the evidences of the Christian religion, Much have arisen upon admissions 
and surrenders which have been made by the ablest divines of the present 
century, and on the improved science of criticism, on both sides ; and then 
pretending that there is no novelty in the objections of modern infidelity : 
or that the objections of the present century had been - sufficiently refuted 
by the Watsons, Paleys, Lardners, or Leslies, of fifty or a hundred years 
ago — as if, after admissions had been made, which had never before been 
admitted; no room had been given for objections to be made, which, bad 
never before been .objected ; and, while the press has teemed with a 
thousand better modes of defending Christianity, unbelievers had been 
asleep all the while, and dreamed of no.adroiter methods of attacking it : 
or, as if the Alleys, Beards, Belsbams, 'Chalmers, Channings, Collyera, 
Elsleys, Hartwell Homes, Pye Smiths, Wilsons, Marshes, &c«, and the 
whole Christian phalanx of the present generation, had had no scope for 
their prowess but on the dead bones of Tindal, Chubb, Voltaire, or Paine ; 

* Yet those propagandists, propagating in God's name what they know to be a » 

would, to be sure, pats themselves off for honest men-~aya, as honest ae the clippers and 
coiners who pay their wsy with a great deal of really good money, only slipping in* here 
and there, a known dump. If, in our own time, all our bishops, and clergy, and all rett* 
gionists, of all sorts, still concur in circulating or countenancing that as truth which they 
know to be false, what chance, think we, had truth in the struggle, in the olden time ? 



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APPENDIX, 403 

and were the successors only to an inglorious war, of Which the conques' 
and the laurels had been won before thej were born. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLES. 



AN EXPLANATION OF SOME TERMS ANn ABBREVIATION* WHICH OCCUR IN 
ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. 

A.U., Anno Vrbis, is the year of the foundation of the city of Rome,* 
according to Varro's account 

A.U.C., Anno Urbis Gondii*, or Anno ab Urbe Condita, is the same sense 
more fully expressed, t. e. in the year from the building of the city. 

A.D., Anno Doming is the year of the Lord. Since the conversion of 
Constantino, a.d. 311, it denotes the vulgar Christian era, according to 
which Christ is supposed to have been born Dec. 2ft, in the 45tty of the 
Julian period, and 764th from the building of Rome. This calculation, 
though serving the purposes of general reading, is known to be defective. 
Lardner says, " Our Saviour was born in the reign of Herod the Great." 
But it is certain that Herod died before the Passover, a.w. 752, very w pro- 
bably in a.u. 750 or 751. 

We learn from Josephus,t that- the Procuratorship of Pontius Pilate 
corresponded with the last ten years of the Emperor Tiberius : that is, from 
a.d. 37 to aj>. 35. As to the particular time ot the death of Christ, a very 
early tradition fixed it to the 35th of March, a.d. 99, under the consulship 
of the two Gemini f This date is adopted by Pagi, Cardinal Norris, and 
Le Clerc. The vulgar era places it, without any known reason, four years 
later. 

The Julian Period is an epoch, so called from Julius Caesar. The first 
year of this epoch, when Caesar's reformation of the Roman year took 
place, commences the first of January, a.u. 709. 

A.fiff;, Anno Mundi, t. e. the year of the world, ridiculously fixed at 4004 
before the birth of Christ Julius Africanus, a Christian chronologist, who 
wrote a.p. 330, insists that the world was made on the first of September, 
and was exactly 6508 years, three months, and twenty-five daya old at the 
birth of Christ The learned Dr. lightfoot thinks he can, with great pro- 
bability, settle the precise time when the Christian covenant began. 
He says, that u Adam was created on Friday morning, at nine o'clock; 
that he ate the forbidden fruit about one (that being the time of eating); 
and that Christ was* promised about three o'clock in the afternoon" So nicely 
accurate is oar religious chronology. 

* Romulus commenced the building of Rome about 751 years before the Cbrietian era. 
+ Antiquitat. 18, 3. f TertuHian, adv. Judaea, e. 8. 



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404 



APPENDIX. 



But never be it forgotten, that the application of 'chronology to matter* 
of faith, is entirely of modern invention. The Apostle* themselves, and 
the most primitive lathers, who understood every thing allegorically, never 
dreamed of giving as any more particular indications of date to the sacred 
story than the common preface to a fable, " And it came topau in those days. 9 
There are no references to contemporary circumstances in the New Testa- 
ment, but such as are outrageously at variance with historical fact Those 
whom we should be taught to speak of as living in the first time of Christi- 
anity, speak of themselves as existing in the last time, and as knowing it 
was the last time.* Those who are beU ved to have flourished when 
Christianity was in its most primitive purity, complain of the prevalence of 
its universal corruption. Justin Martyr, the first of the Christian apologists, 
is out in his chronology to the difference of 300 years, and makes Ptolemy, 
king of Egypt, and Herod, king of Jerusalem, contemporaries. f 



THE REIJIGS AND ORDER OF SUCCESSION OF THE ROMAN EMPERORS, 
THE FOUR f IRST CENTURIES OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 



• 


First 


Century. 






Augustus having reigned 44 


years from the defeat of Mark Antony, 




and 57 from the death of Julius Caesar, died . 


August 19, 


14 


Tiberius, began his reign 


• 




August 19, 


14 


Caligula, began his reign 


• 




March 16, 


37 


Claudius, 


. 




January 24, 


41 


Nero, 


, 




October 13, 


54 


Galba, reigned from 


. , 


June 9, 68 


, to January 15, 


69 


Otho, 


. 


January 15, 


69, to April 16, 


— 


Vitellius, reigned from 


. 


• June 2, 


69, to Dec. 21, 


— 


Vespasian began his reign 


. 


• , 


July 1, 


— 


Titus, . 


. 


. , 


. June 24, 


79 


DOMITIAN, . 


. 


. 


. September 13, 


81 


Nerva 


• . 




September 18, 
January 27, 


96 


Trajan, 


• • 


. 


98 




Second 


Century 


* 




Adrian began his reign 


, 




. August 10, 
July 10, 


117 


Antoninus Pius 






138 


M. Antonius Verus Aurelius, 


the Philosopher . 


March 7, 


161 


Commodus 




• • . • 


. March }7 f 


180 


Helvius Pertmax 


. 


• • • 


Dec. 31, 


192 


Didius Julianns 


• 


• • • 


. March 28, 


193 


Septimius Severus 


• • 


• • 


April 13, 


193 



John ii. 18. 

f Or* £i irroXtpoio; e cuywrtim 0*w\tvg flppociTf/*^i t« tm miaun tots 
0m*,\ivom Hp*h.—Apol. 1, p. 49. 



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APPENDIX. 






405 


Third Century. 


Septimius Severus reigned to . ... . .211 


Antoninus Caracall. 






. 220 


Macrinus . • . . 






. 221 


Antoninus Heliogabalus, ... 






. 224 


Alexander ..... 






. 237 


Maximinus ..... 






. 240 


Gordianus * . 






. 246 


Philip , 






. 254 


Decius ... 






. 255 


Gallus, iEmilianus, three months, 






. 256 


Valerianus, and his son 7 

Galienus, . ) " ' 






. 271 


Claudius . . 






. 273 


Quintilius, only seventeen days in 






'. 273 


Aurelianus .... 






. 276 


Tacitus, only six months 
Florimis reigned 80 days 






} 279 


Frobus • 






, 285 


Carus ..... 






. 287 


Diocletian . 






. 307 



Fourth Century. 
Diocletian reigned with 1 
Maximianut ♦ . / 

Constantius with 1 

Maximinus, Constantius surviving, J 
Constantinus Magnus 
Constantius, jun., Constantius, and Constans 
Julian, began Dec. 11, '365, died 
Jovian, only seven months 
Valenttnianus 
Valentinianus, jun. Gratianus, and Theodosius Magnus 



307 

318 

336 
365 
367 

•378 
399 



THI NAMES AND ORDER OF SUCCESSION OP THE CHRISTIAN FATHERS. 

All who lived and wrote at any time within th* first century, so as to fall within 
a supposition of the possibility of their having seen or conversed with any one or 
more of the Apostles themselves, arc on that account called 

The Apostolic Fathers. 
These are five only : a.d. 

St. Barnabas . . . . 

St. Clement; Bishop of Rome, called therefore Clemens Romanus 36 

St. Hermas, Brother to Pius, Bishop of Rome • .00 

St. Ignatius, Bisnop of Antioch • 

St. Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna . ... 



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406 



APPENDIX. 



Fathers of the Second Century. 

Papias, Bishop of Hierapolis 

Quadratus, a> prophet and apologist 

Aristides, an Athenian philosopher and apologist 

jtgesippus, an ecclesiastical historian 

Justin Martyr . . . . 

Melito, Bishop of Sardis 

Apollinaris, apologist 

Dionysius, Bishop of Corinth 

Theopbilus, Bishop of Antioch 

Irensus, Bishop of Lyons 

Cantsenus, Master of the Alexandrine school 

Clemens Alexandrians 

Fathen of the Third Century, 
Tertuliian, a priest of Carthage . 

Minutius Felix 
Origen * 

St, Gregory, the wonder worker 
Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage 
Nomtian, aspirant to the see of Rome 
Lucian, Presbyter of Antioch. 

Fathen of the Fourth Century, 
Peter, tenth Bishop of Alexandria 
Arnobius . ; 

Lactantius . ' . 

Alius, and his follower 
Eusebius, Bishop of Cesarea 
Constantine, Emperor 
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria 
Damasus, Pope of Rome 
Basil the Great, Bishop of Csesarea, mCappadocia 
Gregory Nazianen 

Gregory, Bishop of Nyssa in Cappadoeia 
Ambrose, Archbishop of Milan 
Jerome, Presbyter and Monk 
Augustin, Bishop of Hippo Regius, in Africa 
Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople 
Innocent I., Pope of Rome 



. 




101 


• • 


. 119 


. . 


. 121 


• 


, 130 


• • 


. 140 


, 


141 


• • 


163 


• • 


167 


• . 


181 


• • • 


182 


. • 


193 


• 


194 


• • 


. 202 


• • « 


210 


• 


230 


• • 


243 


• 


248 


. - . 


251 


. 


290 


f. 


300 


• • 


306 


. 


316 


• • 


316 


. 


, 


316 




. 


316 


• 


• 


326 
370 


. 


, 


370 


• ' 


• 


370 
371 
374 


• 




392 
395 


• 


, 


398 


• . 


-. 


400 



TBI immis aim oama or succession op rax christian bkbxtics. 



The Apostolic Heretics. 



Hymeneus. 
Alexander. 

Philetus. 



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APPENDIX. 407 

ilermogenes. 

Demas. 

Diotrephes. 

Dositheus, a Samaritan, who set himself up as the Messiah. 

Simon Magus, styling himself the great power of God. 

Menander, a pupil of Simon Magus. 

Nicolas, founder of the sect of Nicolaitans, mentioned 2 Iter. 6. 14. 15. 

Cerinthus, against whom St. John wrote his gospel. 

Basilides, who taught mat it was Simon the Cyrenean, and not Jesus, wno was 
crucified ; while Christ stood by and laughed at the mistake of the Jews ; his 
notion was adopted by Mahomet, and is serionsly maintained in the Koran. 

Carpocrates worshipped images of Jesus, Paul, Pythagoras Plato, and 
Aristotle, &c, as having equal claims on human superstition. 



HERETICS OF XHX SECOND CINTURT. 

JNaiareaes, a continuation of the Therapeuts, 

Ebionites, a poor sect of Unitarians, who fell into the wild • conceit mat Jesus. 
Christ was a mere mortal man, and had a corporeal existence 

A.D. 114. Elkai, founder of the sect of the Elcesaites, who maintained, thai 
Jesus Christ was a certain power, whose height was 24 schema, i. e. 66 miles, 
his breadth 24 mites, and his thickness proportionably wonderful. 

They whcvieceive the book called the Acts, or Journeys of the Apostles, Peter 
John, Andrew, Thomas, and Paul, says the learned and pious Jeremiah Jones, 
must believe thaj Christ was not really, but only appeared as a man ; and was 
seen by his disciples in various forms, sometimes as a young man, sometimes as 
an old one, sometimes as a child, sometimes great, sometimes small, sometimes 
so tall, that his head would reach the clouds; that he was not crucified himself, 
but another in his stead, while he stood by and laughed at the mistake of those 
who imagined that they crucified him. Jones on the Canon, vol. 1, p. 12. 

Saturninus of Antioch 

Perdo of Syria 

Marcion of Pontus 

Valentine of Egypt 

Bardesanes of Edessa' 

Tatian of Asyria 

Theodotus 

Artemon * 

Hermogenes 

Montanus. 

It would be idle to. attempt to assign to each heresiarch the particular tenet 
upon which his sect was founded. To the variety of combinations which mad- 
ness may form, madness only would seek for definitions, or care for them. 

Were there ever any two congregations of Christians in all the world, who 
exactly agreed in. telling the Christian story in every respect in the same .way ? 
They who were nearest to the fountain head, were farthest from consistency. 
Upwards of ninety different heresies are admitted to have existed within the three 
first centuries. 



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400 APPENDIX 



JEWISH AUTHORS. 



A.D. 40. Philo Judaeus, a native of Aleaxandria, of a priest's family, and 
. brother to the alabarch, or chief Jewish magistrate in that city. See the 
large use of his testimony by Eusebiut, given in this DlBOESis. 

A.D. 67. T. Flavius Josephus the well known historian, or rather mytho- 
graphist, of the Jewish wars. a ( 

The version of first translation of the Jewish scriptures into Greek, Made 
by 70 .or 72 translators, called in proof, the Septuagint, is properly the 
Alexandrian version, as having been made at Alexandria in Egypt, about 
960 years b. c. Not only the Did Testament, but the New. was entirely 
concocted and got up by these Egyptian monks, who from tneir far famed 
university of Alexandria, dealt out at their pleasure, the credenda that have 
since regulated the faith, and subjugated the reason of mankind. In- a 
word* we owe every iota of the Christian religion to the Egyptian monks, 
and the facilities afforded for overbearing the resistance of reason and com- 
mon sense, by the collecting and bringing together of all the powers of 
imposture into the first of these mischievous and wicked cabals, those 
chartered phalanxes of confederated knaves, which have since been called 
universities. 

A.D. 138. Aquila of Pontus, a Gentile convert to the Christian faith, 
lapsed into Judaism, and translated the Old Testament 

A.D. 175. Theodotion, also a Gentile convert, lapsed into Judaism, and 
made a very literal version of the Hebrew scriptures. 

A.D. 20 1. Symmachus, a Samaritan, first adhered to the Jews, then turned 
Christian, and afterwards turned Jew again ; made a new, but rather para- 
phrastical, translation of the Old Testament. 



THE NAMES AND ORDER OF SUCCESSION OF WRITERS WHO HAVE 
DIRECTLY OPPOSED THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. 

The principal are: — 1, Celsus; 2, Hierocles; 3, Porphyry; and 4, 
Julian. 

Of these, the writings only of the Emperor Julian, who comes far too 
late in time to be of consideration — hat e come down to us. 

We have nothing from the pen of Celsus, but what Origen, who attempted 
to refute him a hundred years after, has chosen to affiliate upon him. 

We gather that Hierocles opposed the character of the philosopher 
Apollonius of Tyana, as a real character and a better example of moral per- 
fection, than the imagined hero of the gospel. 

Porphyry acquired the surname of the virtuous; and brought such 
formidable objections to the Christian story, that all his real writings were 
by the order of the Christian Emperor Theodosios committed to the 
flames ; and such writings only as Christians themselves had forged, per- 
mitted to come down to posterity under his name. 



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APPE^BftJL 409 



ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORIANS. 



A.D. 316. Eusebius, Bishop of Cassarea. 

JLD. 438* Theodoret of Antioob, Bishop of Cyrus. 

A.D. 439. Socrates of Constantinople, a lawyer or pleader, hence some* 
times called Sehobstkus. He wrote an ecclesiastical history from the 
accession of Constantino, a.d. 309, to a.i>. 439, with uncommon judgment 
and diligence. 

A.D. 440. Sozomen (Hermias) of Bethelia, near Gaza, in Palestine, 
composed a history of the same period as the two preceding writers ; his 
style is superior to. that of Soorates ; bat his judgment must be inferior. 

A.D. 425. Philostorgius of Cappadocia wrote a history of about a 
hundred years from a.d. 38ft. 

A J>. 595. Eragrius Scholasticus, Prssfeet of Antioch: His Ecclesias- 
tical History extends from A.n. 431, to a.d. 594. * It is much loaded/' says 
Elaley, "with credulous accounts of miracles.*' 

A.D. 401. So4piti*s>8eferas, a Latin Historian, of Aqtrifene, in France, 
and a priest, has left us a little history of the world,— brought down to 
A.D. 400. 

A.D. 1838. Nicephotus CalUstus, a monk of Constantinople. His history 
is weak and fall of idle fables. 



THE ECCLESIASTICAL COUNCIL^. 

AD. 1. The first held at Jerusalem, was a meeting of King. Herod and 
all the chief priests and scribes of the people, with the wise men of the 
east, to enquire where Christ should be born. 

A J). 12. u A council of priests, whereat Jesus Christ was admitted into 
the holy order of priesthood, — a jury of mid wives having been impanelled, 
and upon due scrutiny had on the body of his mother, having given in 
their unanimous verdict, that her virginity remained intact "So far the 
learned Suidas, as he learned of a Jew. 

A.D 32. Council of chief priests to make their bargain with Judas 
Iscariot for the arrest of Jesus Christ. 

AJD. 32. A council of chief priests to defeat the testimony of the soldiers 
who kept the sepulchre. 

A.D. 32. Council of the Apostles to elect Matthias into the apostleship 
in the room of the traitor Judas. 

GENERAL COUNCILS. * 

A.D. 47. Council of the Apostles concerning circumcision. — Acts of the 
Apostles. 

A.D. 66. Council of the Apostles to elect Simeon Cleophas 2nd Bishop 
of Jerusalem, to succeed James. 

A.D. 70. Council in which the apostolic canons are pretended to have 
been agreed on. 

52 3e 



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410 APPENDIX. 

A.D. 99. Council of Ephesus for the reformation of the churches and 
consecration of Bishops, at which John the Evangelist was present; and, 
being a priest, as we learn from Polycrates, who had the advantage of hi 
in being a bishop, wore a *scapukry or surplice* 

A.D. 163. The council of Ancyra in Gelatin* to suppress the errors of 
Montanus. ' 

A.D. 179. Councils in France and Asia, against the heresy of Montanus. 

A.D. 193. Council at Rome touching the celebration of Easter. Victor 
Bishop of Rome excommunicated all the eastern churches, for their 
difference on this subject 

A.D. 346. Fabianus, Pope of Rome* miraculously elected by the Holy 
Ghost perching upon his head in the shape of a dove ; in synod denounced 
the schism of Novates. 

A.D. 254. Council of Carthage under its President, Cyprian, fell into 
the heresy of re-baptizing heretics. 

A.D. 871. A first and second council of Antioch, for the condemnation 
and degradation of its Bishop, Paul of Samosata. 

A.D. 296. Grand council of 300 bishops and 80 priests, at Sinuessa, 
where Marcellinua, Bishop of Rome* was condemned for denying Christ, 
and sacrificing to idols. 

A.D. 307. Council of Ancyra, where such as sacrificed to idols were 
allowed to be received under certain conditions, and deacons who could 
not contain, were suffered to marry. 

A.D. 327. Grand Council of Nice, in Bythinia, under the presidency of 
Constantine the Great, gave us the God of God creed used in the commu- 
nion service. Pappus, in his Swnodkon to the council of Nice, asserts, that 
having promiscuously put all the books under the communion table in a 
church, they besought the Lord, that the intpired records might get upon 
the table, while the tpurious ones remained underneath, which accordingly 
happened, f 

A.D. 368. Council of Laodicea. This council first, and not that of 
Nice, is supposed to have given a catalogue of the books contained in the 
New Testament : not including the Revelation. 

A.D. 397. The third counciiof Carthage ; present, Aurelius, Bishop of 
Carthage ; Augustin, Bishop of Hippo, and 42 other bishops. . Of this 
council, the 47th canon ordains, * that nothing beside the canonical scrip- 
tures be read in the church under the name of divine scriptures.' 9 All those 
contained and arranged as in our present Old and New Testaments, are in 
this canon enumerated as being canonical 

* Km mowd? o «n to orufioj m xvpttf atcurto-w, oj tXnvSn uptvs to «-ctocXo» 
sti $opuxu$ — And John, who leaned on the Lord's bosom, who having become a 
priest wore a petalon. — Ettseb. lib. 3. c. 25'.— 'Popish trumpery so soon in 
fashion 1 

t Eo you oiKu tow Qtev xarut wsy% t*i 9b» rpemtyi avtok T*pa$i/*twi> irpoow 
farow; Evpcdtiva* raq SioirwcTOUf nrafv $ TQt Kvpfor f{a»Tf)0 > a/*Ei'fl, jtouTetf xtfiln- 
Xoi/j, o kou ytyonif t/Toxotrwdiv. 



Digitized 



byGoogk 



APPENDIX. 411 

A.D. 401. Tbe council of Chaleedon. Here first the new Testament 
was set in the midst of the assembly, as the jjreat appeal. Yet St. Cbrv- 
sostom, who died a.d. 407, assures us, that m his time, the Acts of the 
Apostles was a book, by many Christians entirely unknown. 

" The canon of die New Testament," says Dr. Lardner, * had not been 
settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged, 
but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves, concerning 
•'the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical; and to 
determine according to evidence." Even so late as in the time of the histo- 
rian Cassiodoras,* whom Dr. Lardner places at a.d. 556. 

There are reckoned in all 17 general councils, but the rest of them are 
too late in time, or too irrelevant to any bearing on the historical evidences 
of Christianity, to come within the scope of this Diegesis— the council of 
Trent, a.d. 1549, is the last of them. 

Augustus tbe monk first preached Christianity in England aj>. 597. 

Tbe inhabitants of England being Picts, or painted savages, first embraced 
Christianity, a.d. 698. , Ckronol. Table of Evans's Sketches. 

• Senator and Compiler of the Tripartite History, t. e. tbe Ecclesiastical Histories of 
Socrates, Socomen, and Theodoret united. — - S e e this argument handled in my Syntagma, 
published from this prison in refutation of the infinite vituperations of the Christian 
Instruction Society. 



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41* 



APPENDIX. 



ICCtlSIASTXCAt KKTXMUKS. 



Expenditure of the Clergy of all tht Christian World. 



Number of 
Hearers. 



Nations. 

England, and 
Wales. 

Ireland 

Scotland 

France* ......••• 

Spain 

Portugal 

Hungary 

Italy 

Austria. 

Switzerland. ... 

Prussia..... 

German States. 

HoUand 

Netherlands. ... 

Denmark 

Sweden 

Rusia. 

Turkey. v 

North America. 

South America. 

Dispersed } 

Christians. J 



Caths. &c... 

Prots 

Caths. 

_ Other Sects. 
/Presbyts. ... 

\ Caths. , M ... 
J Caths. ...... 

I Prots....-.,. 

Caths 

Caths 

/Caths. 

I Prots 

Caths, ..;.., 

[Caths 

i Prots 

L Greeks. 

/Caths. 

I Prots 

J Caths 

I Prots 

J Caths. 

I Prots 

f Caths. 

1 Prots 

Catha. 

Prots..... «-, 

Prots 

r Caths 

J Prots 

[Greeks. 

f Caths 

\ Greeks. 

i Prots. 
Caths. 

Caths. 

i Caths ...... 

(Prots 



6;ooo,ooo 

6,000,000 
400,000 
5^00,000 
1,100,000 
1,754,824 
50,000 

29,000,000 
1,000,100 

11,000,000 
3,000,000 
4,000,000 
1,700,000 

19,391,000 

15,918,000 
1,000,000 
2,000,000 
600,000 
1,120,000 
'4,000,000 
6,636,000 
4,763,000 
8,000,000 
700,000 
1,300,000 
3,000,000 
1,700,000 
3,400,000 
5,500,000 
2,500,000 

34,000,000 

1,000,000 

5,000,000 

9,100,000 

500,000 

15,000,000 
1,500,000 
1,500,000 



Payment to 
Clergy. 



£7,696,000 

613,000 

1,300,000 

> 261,000 

«06,t00 
44,000 
1,030,000^ i 
20,000 'i 
1,100,000 
300,000 
320,000 l 
89,000 ) 
776,000 
800,000 l 
56,000 C 
37,000 ) 
80,000 l 
57,000 J 
200,000 I 
827,000 J 
285,000 I 
480,000) 
56,0001 
104,000 J 
105,000 
119,000. 
238,000 
275,000 -v 
125,000 C 
600,000 \ 
80,000 \ 
123,000 I 
546,000 i 
80,000 5 
450,000 
76,000 I 
75,000 S 



Total 
Payment. 



£9,920,000 



1,050,000 

1,100,000 
300,000 

409,000 

776,000 

887,000 

87,000 

527,000 

765,000 

160,000 

106,000 
1)9,000 
238,000 

1,000,000 

153,000 

676,000 
460,000 
150,000 



Great Britain for- 
Leaving, for 



219,532,824 
20,804,824 



193,728,000 



— pays.^. 
to pay only 



£18,772,000 
9,920,000 



£8,852,000 



Digitized- by VjOOQ IC 



APPENDIX. 



4U 



KtcAmnuaio* or THE pmcxwwo tabic. 



Protestants, &c 48,110,824 pay their Clergy 

Catholics. 180,422,000.. * 

Greek Church. ... 41,000,000... 



••• *•« ... 



... £\ 1.462*00 

6,540,600 

... 760,000 



Total Christians 219,538,824 pay their Clergy 
Great Britain, for 20,804,824 people pays ... 

Leaving, for 198,728,000 people to pay, only 



£ 1 8,772,000 
9,920,000 

.. £ 8,858,000 



EXTIKT Or •HilirrLkNITT. 

If we divide the known countries of the earth into thirty equal parts, fire 
of them are Christian, six Mahometan, and nineteen Pagan^Jtoyfe't 
Dictionary, 

Dr. Evans, supposing the inhabitants of the world to bo eight hundred 
millions, gives us the annexed scale" of probable proportions : 



Jews... 
Pagans 
Christians 
Mo] 



Subdivision of Christians, 



Greek and Eastern Churches 

Roman Catholics 

Protestants 



Total number o/ Christians 



... 2,500,000 

-, 482,000,000 

... 175,000,000 

... 140,000,000 



... 90,000,000 
... 80,000,000 
... 65,000,000 

.,* 175,000,000 



In this, which is wholly Christian arithmetic, no account is made of the 

C robable proportion of either professed o* real unbelievers, whose number, 
e it greater or less, is on all hands admitted to be an increasing number, 
and a number to be deducted, not from the amount of Jews* Pagans, or 
Mohammedans; but exclusively from the amount of Christians; and in the 
amount of Christians, chiefly from the most intelligent, reflecting, and 
literary characters, d|at is, unquestionably from the very nerves .and core of 
their strength. 

Let their own statement be credible— e. g. Dr. Priestly observes in one 
of his last sermons, that when he visited France in 1774, all her philosophers 
and men of letters were absolutely infidels.* 

Dr. Evans who died Jan. 15, 1897, had announced his plan of a work, 
which he lived not to finish} whose professed object, in his own terms, was 
to shield the minds of the rising generation from the growmg mrii of the 
age, an overweening and clamorous infidelity .f 



* Quoted thus in Evans's Sketches, 15tb ed. p. 5. 
f Evans* Sketches, 15th ed. pref. sv. 



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414 



APPENDIX. 



The whole united Scottish Presbytery, in a dolorous Jeremiad, publicly 
announce, that ail the most intelligent and accomplished men among them, 
have imbibed the principles of infidelity. Their own words are, "O God, 
pity us, for our case is very pitiful, and there is nobody eke to pity t», but only 
thou, O God! And not now is it according to the word of the Lord in the 
parable, that one sheep should be astray, and ninety and nine safely 
gathered into the fold, but that the ninety and nine should be straying and 
only one abiding in the fold."* Yet these zealous advocates of the Chris- 
tian cause affect to treat their adversaries, who are thus gaining the march 
upon them, it seems, at the rate of a hundred to one, as objects of unmingled 
contempt. It is not in the power of language to exceed the tone of bitter 
reviling and caustic scorn with which the followers of the imagined meek 
and holy Jesus speak of all who call their pretensions in question. The 
odium theologicum, or theological hatred, has become a proverb, indicating 
that no hatred is so intense and implacable, as that of the professors of a 
religion of long-suffering and forgivenness. 



AUTHORITIES ADDUCED IN THE DIEGESIS. 



Dr. Whitby'a hast Thoughts, 

EUley's Annotation! on the Gospels, 

Tacitus, 

Virgil, 

Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, 

Jones on the Canon of the New Test. . 

Orosius, 

Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman 

Empire, 
Milton's Paradise Lost, 
Pope's Homer's Iliad, 
Matrimonial Service, 
Le Gere, Latin Note, 
Dr. Lardner, 1 

Unitarian Version of the Ne# Testament, 
Archbishop Neweomb, I 
Hutchinson, 
Shaw's Trareb 
Shakspeare, 

Par khurst's Hebrew Lexicon, 
A Friend, 
Josephus, Greek, 
Eussbins, Greek, 
Valerius Maadmus, 
Author's Syntagma, 
Pseudo Plutarch, 
More's Songs, 



Juvenal, 

Moutfaucon, 

Holyot, 

Lange, 

Henman, 

Faustus, 

Basnage, 

Manifesto of the Christian Evidence Society, 

Evanson'i Dissonance of the Four Gospels, 

Bretschoeider'* Probabilia, 

Stein's Authentia Vindicate, 

Bishop Sage's Principles of the Cyprianic age* 

Menander, 

St Gregory, 

St. Athanastus, 

Paty's Horse Paulinas, 

Reeved Preliminary to Vlneentiua, 

Carets Histovia Literaris, 

Leasing, 1 

Niemener, 

Stalfeld of Geetmftnn, 

Dr» EMhhora, 

Bishop Marsh, 

Pbiloo/Mri^WfrwiB. 

Julius Firmicius, I 

Libanius, 

Skelton's Appeal, 



• Pastoral Letter from the Scottish Presbytery, 1827, p. 89. 



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APPENDIX. 



41ft 



Socrates Scholastics, 



Prudentius, 

Symmachus, 

Origins* Christians in Author's Letters, 

St. Ambrose, 

Addison, 

Pope, 

Seneca's Medea, 

£usebios, 

Ovid, 

Marinas, 

Dr. Lardner,' 

Justin Martyr, 

Science's PoJymetis, 

Orphic Hymns, *! / A 

Evanson, 

Judge Blaekstone, ' ■ ^ : " 

Bishop Kidder, 

Oxford Encyclopedia, 

Dr. Kennecott's Codices, 

Spearman, 

Dr. Godwyn, 

Bryant's Ancient Hist. 

Archbishop Magee, '""" ' 

Harris's Hermes, ' > " T 

Varro, 

Vosius, 

Tertullian, 

Evans's Sketches, 

Mr. Beard, of Manchester, 

Archdeacon Paley, 

Dr. Chrysostom, ' 

Dr. Mill, 

Beausobre, - 

Dr. Samuel Clarke, 

Aroobitts, '* 4 * 

St. Augustin, 

Lactantius, . '*: 

Mens. DailHe, 

Blount's Philostratus, 

Epiphanies, 

Bishop Burnet, 

Cicero, 

Casanbon, 

Dr. H. More 

Archbishop Wake, 

Dr. Sender, 

Bell's Pantheon, 

Desmaiseaux's Life of St Btremonu, 



Times Newspaper, 

Mosheim, 

Fabricius, 

Dr. Tindal, 

Works of Paulinus, 

Dr. Middleton's Letter from Rome, 

Dr, Middleton's Free Inquiry, 

Bishop Stillingfleet, 

Mons. Turretin. 

Author's Letter from Oakham, 

Bishop Fell, 

Mons. Dupin, 

Origen, 

Polybius, 

Grotius, ' 

Bishop Marsh, 

Dr. Clagett, 



Serarins, 

Drusius, 

Sealiger, 

Sir William Jones in Asiatic Researches, 

Dr. Bentley, 

Dr. John P«e Smith, of Homerton, 

Valency, 

Higgin's Celtic Druids, 

Colonel Fitsclarence's Travels, 

Maurice's Indian Antiquities, 

Quark's Emblems, 

Dupuis, 

Apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus, 

Reeve's Apologies of the Fathers, 

Gonzales, 

Aurelius, 

Life of St. Patrick, , 

Aurelius, 

Volney, 

Hesyehius, 

Anacreon, 

Porney's Pantheon Mythiireum. 

Homer, 

Aischylus, 

Potter's Translation of* 

Bishop Watson, 

Kortholt's Psganns Obtrectator, 

Minucius Felix, 

Meagher. 

Reeve's Apologies, 

Madame Daeier, 

Dr. Edward Daniel Clarke's Travels, 



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416 



APPENDIX. 



Potter's Antiquities, 



Theedoret, 
Soame Jenvns, 
Liturgy,' 
Nicene Greed, 
Apostles' Creed, 



Archbishop Tillotson, 

Grater's Inscriptions, 

Boldonius's Epigraphs 

Aringhus, 

Onomacritas, 

Johnson's Rambler, 

Clerical Review, 

Watts' Hymns, 

Mr. Adams, of Edmonton, 

Mons. Baillie, 

Confucius, 

Cotelerius, 

St. Jerome, 

Ignatius, 

Julian apod CyrL., 

Dorotheus, 

Abdias's Aoostoiic History, 

St. Cyrill, 

Sir James Scarlett, 

St. Barnabas, , 

St. Clement, 

Stalloicius, 

Flavins Dexter. 

Montfaucon, 

J. H. Esq. unpublished, 

Belsham's Evidences, 

Dionysius Halicarnassus, 

Suidas, 

Bellamy's Origen, 

Dupin's Bibl. Origines, 

Author's Letters from Oakham, 

Evagsjus, 

Bibl. Univer. 

Zosimus, 



Baronius, 

Pagi, 

Saltonstall, 

Sibylline Verses, 

Catholic Miracles, 

Monsieur Le Gere, 

Toland's Natareneos, 

Maracci's Koran, • 

Tombstone in Deptford Churchyard, 

European Magazine. 

Macrobius, 

Blount's Philostratus, 

Joseph us, 

Author's Orations before the A r eo pag us, 
Bryant's Yindicias Flavian*, 888. 

Dr. Kippis, 

Abbe Bullet, 

Leslie's short and easy Method with Deists, 

John de Ferraras, 

Johannes de Spire, 

Procopius, 

Baronius, 

Suetonius, 

Justin's Apology, Greek, 

dementis Strommata, Great, 

St. Jerome, LaHn 9 899. 

Theopbilus of Antioch, 

Pliny, 

Dr. Semler, of Leipsic, 

Haversaas, 

Gierig, 

Corrode, 

Jeremy Xavier, 

Epietetus' Enchiridion, 

Plutarch, 

Emperor Adrian, 

Emperor Antoninus, 

Martial, 

Lucius Aouleius, 
. Lucian, 

Dio Prusaeus, 

Arrian. 



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APPENDIX, 



417 



TEXTS OP SCRIPTURE BROUGHT INTO ILLUSTRATION IN THE COURSE 
OF THIS DIEGESIS. 



Exodus ii. 








Exodus xx. 








Numbers xxiii. 19 








Deuteronomy xxiii. 
Joshua x. 12. 








Judges i. 19. 
Judges x. 42. 
Judges xi. 24. 
1 Kings iL 8. 
1 Kings xi. 1. 

1 Kings xxii. 

2 Kings xxiii. 
2 Kings xxii. 
2 Kings ii. 11. 

S Chronicles xx. 21 






... 164 


Psalms. ... ... 


... 


... 


... 159 


Ps&lm ex. 1. 


...' 


... 


... 161 


Psalm xxviii. 5. 


■ •• 


■ ... 


... 208 


Psalm ii. 9. 


... 


... 


...217 


Psalm xc. 


• •• 


... 


... 221 


Isiah xhr. I. 


... 


' ... 


... 7 


Isaiah liii. 5. ... 


... 


... 


... 193 


Isaiah ix. 6. ... 


... ■ 


... 


... 197 


Isaiah xi. 9. ... 


... 


... 


... 278 


Isaiah liii. 14. ... 


... 


... 


... 379 


Ezekiel xiv. 9. ... 


... 


... 


...346 


Ezekiel viii. 4. ... 


... 


... 


... 162 


Ezekiel ix. 4. ... 


... 


... 


... 201 


Daniel iv. 26. ... 


... 


... 


... 24 


Haggai ii. 7. 
Malachi iii. 20. ... 


••: 


... 


... 156 
... 22 


Malachi iv. 2. ... 


... 


... 


... 22 


Malachi iii. 4. ... 


... 


... 


... 161 


Matthew xxiv. 24. 


... 


... 


... 7 


xvi. 29. 


•... 


... 


... 7 


xxii. 42. 


... 


... 


... 7 


xxi. 25. 


••• 


... 


... 24 


ii. 1. ... 


... 


... 


... 37 


ii. 23. 


... 


... 


... 60 


xviii. 21. 


... 


... 


... 62 


xix. 18. 


••• 


67 


,91,94 


xviii. 15. 


... 


... 


... 92 


xx. 25. 


... 


... 


... 95 


xxiii. 9. 


... 


... . 


... 96 


xviii. 81.. 


... 


... 


... 99 


xiii. 6t. 


... 


... 


... 109 


xxiv. 88. 


•*• 


... 


... 119 



Matthew xix. 1. 


... 




... 183 


ii. 22. 


... 


... 


... 138 


iv. 13. 


... 


... 


... 184 


xxi. 7. 


... 


... 


... 135 


xiii. 11. 


... 


... 


... 140 


xviii. 17, 


18. 


... 


... 151 


xix. 12. 


... 


... 


... 148 


iii. 17. 


... 


... 


... 150 , 


vi. 9. 


... 


... 


... 152 


v. 24. 


... 


... 


... 167 


xxvii. 28. 


... 


... 


... 168 


xxvii. 37. 


... 


... 


... 168 


xviii. 20. 


... 


... 


.,. 186 


xvi. 22. 


... 


... 


... 193 


xvii. 14. 


... 


... 


... 221 


xviii. 13. 


... 


..i 


... 221 


vi. 12. 


... 


... 


...244 


xxviii. 3. 


... 


... 


... 269 


xii. 8. 


... 


... 


... 278 


v. 84. 


... 


... 


... 273 


x. 23. 


... 


... 


... 281 


v. 16. 


•• 


... 


... 327 


v. 18. 


... 


... 


... 874 


ii. 16, &C, 




... 


... 378 


xxvii. 52, 


Sec. 


... 


... 383 


iii. 16. 


... 


... 


... 416 


Mark adv. 21. 


... 


... 


... 7 


xi. 30. 


... 


... 


... 24 


ix.45. 


... 


... 


... 29 


ix. 47. 


... 


... 


... 29 


iv. 12.' 


... 


... 


... 45 


' xiii. 20. 


... 


... 


... 119 


xiii. 13. 


... 


... 


... 119 


vii. 81. 


... 


... 


... 132 


xv. IT. 


... 


... 


... 168 


xv. 26. 


... 


... 


... W8 


xii. 82. 


... 


... 


... 242 


xvi 16. 


... 


... 


... 804 


i. 44. 


... 


... 


... 310 


iv. 12V 


... 


... 


... 310 


i. 10. 


... 


... 


... 387 


Luke iv. 23. 


... 


•s. 


... 5 


i. 88. 




... 


... 5 


xxi. 8. 


... 


... 


... 7 


ix. 21. , 


.. > 


... 


... 7 


xv. 18. 


... 


... 


... 24 


xx. 4. 


... 


... 


... 24 



53 



3 F 



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410 



APPENDIX. 






xaL 19. 


John tLAI* 


1* la ••• 


ix. 8. 


xxL 31* 


Aed xru. 88. 


i.2. 


xhr. 18. 


sin* 1. 


XT. 10. 


m.s. 


xiL81. 


IL36. 


TiL I. 


.▼. 9. 


L12. 


*h 


IT. 


xxu.88. 


xt. 89. 


iL 38. 


T. 


xxii. 87. 


xx. 35. 


L86. 


ir. 88. 


xxiy. 39. 


xriiL 94. 


xxiT. 81* 


xix. 13. 


IL7. 


Lift. 


ir. 87. 


% xx. ia 


L 17. 


L85. 


iix.5. 


xL86* 


xx. 8. 


xriii 18. 


xrlii.9 


I?. 86. 


xriiL 16. 


xriiL 80. 


xir. 2. 


xiiL 9. 


Tlfi. 13. 


xxnu. 81. 


ix. 50. 


L 18. 


▼iL 68. 


xix. 15. 


xix. 7. 


xix. 18. 


xix. 8. 


xL 24. 


xix. 19. 


xxriu. 31. 


ix.5. 


xu. 19. 


xii. 46. 


▼iiL 19. 


L 1. 


xix. 15. 


i.9. 


XT. 89. 


iL 10. 


XT. 39. 


▼iiL 56. 


it 19 


▼L55. 


Roma&s iiL 7. 


ix. 8. 


iiL 5, 7. 


▼iii. 5. 


xii. 13. 


ill A. 


xL 13 


iii. 8. 


xiL 8. 


iii. 13. 


1 Oorinthiins i, 19* 


ix. 8. 


L 27. 


is. 84. 


ii. 7. 


L14. 


ix.88. 


L3SL 


xii, 


xa. 87. 


T. 


xx. 17. 


XL84. 


xiL 46. 


xt. 88. 


19. 


xir. 88* 



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APPENDIX. 


1 Corinthians xv. 4. 


Colossians i. 23. 


XV. 


i. 26. 


xv. 29. 


ii. 9. 


xii 28. 


i. 23. 


xiv. 29. 


L24. 


xiv. 27. • 


1 Thessalonians ii. 7. 


xiv. 3. 


2 Thessalonians ii, 11. 


vi 3. 


ii. 8. 


i. 2. 


1 Timothy vi. 20. 


xii. 


iii. 16. 


iv. 1. 


iii. 13. 


XT. 9. 


ii. 9. 


xr. 20. 


iii. 3. 


xr. 86. 


n. 8. 


ii.3. 


L3. 


L24. 


iiL 13. 


* Corinthians xii. 16. 


L 15. 


xL23. 


iv. 8. 


iiL 6. 


Epistle to Titns i. 7. 


viiu 4. 


Hebrews xiii. 7. 


xi 6. 


xii. 24. 


xi. 13. 


x. 22. 


iii 6. 


i. 3. 


xu. 2. 


ix. 13. 


xii. 7. 


Epistle of James v. 12. 


v. 13. 


ii. 15. 


x. 10. 


1st Epistle of Peter, ii. 2* 


„ xi. 6. 


iii. 8. 


Galatians iv. 9 


i. 20. 


ii. 2. 


1.2. 


i. 17. 


iii. 15. 


iv. 24. 


iiL IS. 


i. 11 


iii. 16. 


. 1. 8. 


2d Epistle of Peter iii 14. 


iv. 24. 


ii. 4. 


iii. 1. 


Epistles of John— 1st Ep. ii. 12. 


ii. 14. 


3d Ep. 10. 


iv. IS. 


IstEp. i. 5. 


EphesiansL 15. 


1st Ep. i. 7. 


iv. 9. 


1st Ep. iv. 3. 


Philippians iv. 8. 


Jnde ver. 6. 


i. 1. 


Revelation xii. 5. 


iii. 2 


xii. 13. 


L 15 


iixl 13 


Polossisos ii 8. 





419 



finis. 



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This book should be returned to 
the Library on or before the last date 
stamped below. 

A fine of five cents a day is incurred 
by retaining it beyond the specified 
time. 

Please return promptly. 





•X72H 



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